ed, that, like the bookseller in Joseph Andrews, he "would as readily print a sermon of Whit"field, as any farce that was ever refused to be "licensed for indelicacy." At present he has done no more than hire a few literary scavengers to rake the channel and pelt his adversaries, in the hope of chasing them from the course; and if he find himself disappointed, and discover that his Magazine is no more able to outstrip its rival, than a man with a wooden leg is able to catch a hare, he must content himself with railing at his unprofitable servants, who, dealing their blows in the dark, have missed the proper adversary, and only wounded the interests of piety and morality. He has begged help (as (as I am convinced you perfectly well know) from every man of letters whom he could tease into granting it for nothing; and bought it from every scribbling drudge willing to sell it cheap. Of this latter awkward squad who have consented to perform their exercise at his bidding, I have heard only of two-a brace of poets-the doleful Highland Hector, and the rhyming Swineherd. I should be I should be sorry to

give offence to either of these poetical drum

mers, by classing them irregularly; but really, I am totally unable to settle the precedence between a flea and a louse. If their manager, the publisher, will shew me his books, and the order in which he writes their names, I shall endeavour to catalogue them in the same manner. In addition to these, he has collected a "sine nomine turba," a nameless gang of "stickit lawyers" and juvenile pretenders to criticism, some of whom (like Martial's coxcombs) turn up their noses before they are well able to blow them. This precious pack has undertaken, on some principle of free-masonry in nonsense, to find out the dunce-mark in their enemies, and estimate the negative quantity of intellect evinced in the braying of brother blockheads. They must infallibly succeed, if it be true of dulness, as it is of wit, that they who excel therein are best qualified to arbitrate the pretensions of others.

But how will the public be persuaded to help off even one copy of a Magazine composed by such trashy dabblers? Even infidels weary of impiety, and even fools are shocked with it at last. But the annals of bookselling

have preserved a recipe for such emergencies; and the famous Mr Curl has not left his successor without a precedent on this occasion. The policy which the publisher and editor of this Magazine have pursued in their distress, is thus anticipated by the Goddess of Dulness in her advice to Curl in the Dunciad :

To him the Goddess: Son! thy grief lay down
And turn this whole illusion on the town.
As the sage dame, experienc'd in her trade,
By names of toasts retails each batter'd jade;
Be thine, my Stationer! this magic gift;
Cook shall be Prior, and Concanen Swift:
So shall each hostile name become our own,
And we, too, boast our Garth and Addison."

Hence the majority of the respectable names which are promised as permanent contributors to "Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine."

I scarce know whether to laugh at or to lament the destiny of those who in good earnest may be termed the journeymen of this publisher; ordained as they are to be starved by his love, or libelled by his hate. While they work as much, and accept as little as he pleases, they have all the honour that his creditable countenance can confer. "Nos

poma natamus," he tells them, with an air of

benignant familiarity, "You to praise, and I "to pudding." The instant they disagree, he denounces them as dunces and rogues,as indifferent to the force of their retort, as Jack Ketch is to the participation of the disgrace he inflicts; and he hires a literary terrier or two to gnaw their heels and supply their place, till a second disagreement produce a repetition of the same dissentions.

As for the author of the vile Parody of Scripture, who attempts to jest with a halter about his neck, I give him joy of a performance for which his conscience will reproach him as a scorner of religion, after he has spent every farthing that his bookseller would bestow to keep him from the gallows; and which he cannot now avow either to the public or his friends, without reproaching himself with the want of the only quality that can redeem a stupid miscreant from universal contempt. I am enabled to state, as a fact now quite notorious, that the ingenious and accomplished editor of a celebrated literary work, conveyed to this libeller, through the medium of his publisher, an intimation which the libeller would perhaps prosecute me for scandal if I

reported, but which he has shewn he deserved, by pocketing it in silence. I should have been much dissatisfied with the conduct of that accomplished and respectable gentleman in thus resenting a charge, the falsehood of which nobody knew better than his accuser, if the result of his proceeding has not put the finishing stroke to his libeller's disgrace, by shewing that he who is such a prodigal of his conscience as to make thus free with his God, is such an economist of his person as to hedge and shrink from encountering the correction of a man. Thus destitute both of piety and courage, the noblest quality of what is divine, and the most manly of what is human in our nature, what inferior merit shall this buffoon be permitted to claim? That he has conveyed a sting to the minds of one or two worthy men, has arisen from the venom of his shaft, and not from the vigour of his bow. "He has sometimes sported with lucky ma"lice," said Johnson, in reference to a far abler calumniator, "but to him that knows "his company, it is not hard to be sarcastic "in a mask. While he walks like Jack the "Giant-killer in a coat of darkness, he may

of