son,

"do much mischief with little strength. "When he has once provided for his safety "by impenetrable secresy, he has had no66 thing to combat but truth and justice, ene"mies whom he knows to be feeble in the "dark." He has shown his wit in searching Scripture for sentences to be ludicrously and profanely applied to those whom he was hired to traduce; his magnanimity in insulting decrepitude; his cleverness and humour in pushing down the crutch of a lame man; his generous hostility in hiding his own perand yet making personal defects the butt of his insolence. Shakespear has told us that "In nature there's no blemish but the mind;" and a more odious blemish than this libeller's own mind, I believe it would be difficult to depict. I wish the authors, great and small, whom he has bepraised, much joy of the diplomas they hold from him. But I would rather belong to the party that, with a PLAYFAIR, share the honour of possessing no quality that can excite the complacency of so despicable a babbler. By his mean and stupid abuse of that great man, he has conferred on him the only sort of honour which it is within his

competence, and which it is certainly most congenial to his nature and his manners to bestow. I would rather be pelted, than cheered and embraced by the mob of Orator Hunt, or the pen of this libeller. Nor shall I honour him so far as to notice one of his untruths. The cart's tail is the only proper theatre for discussion with him; the beadle his proper disputant; and the " things called

66

whips" the only argument and answer to which he is entitled. As for his publisher, who carries a shield before him to battle, and hopes to eat all that he kills, he will be severely enough punished by the loss of his meal. On another occasion, he will assuredly find calomel pills a much better remedy for the bile, than profanity.

It has given me great pleasure to learn that some of the most respectable inhabitants of this city, who had been importuned by the publisher of this Magazine to purchase copies of it, have since returned them,-declaring that they would neither keep nor encourage such loathsome profanity and scurrility; and prohibiting the publisher from sending them any future number of the work. Some others,

I dare say, who can swallow profanity where it is united with a shadow of wit, will follow the same example, in order to get back the halfcrowns they paid for what is obviously not worth half a farthing to any body but the tobacconist. When I first saw this Magazine on the publisher's counter, I turned over a page or two, and then shut it, as I thought, forever; quickly perceiving that the outer covering and vignette were no more than the Lion's skin, and that the genius of the former editors had deserted it forever. Having subsequently heard of this precious parody, I not only perused it, but taxed myself to wade through another of its articles,—a tirade against Mr Leigh Hunt; intended, I suppose, to provoke that gentleman to give some repute to the Magazine by noticing it in his Newspaper. It seems to be the composition of some obscure and desperate dunce, who tries to make people look at him by walking without his breeches. Such horrible nonsense is below all criticism; and yet some parts of it amused me; for I have been lately reading Peregrine Pickle," and now see in this article, that Pallet the painter is still alive. He

66

has exchanged the painter's brush for the critic's birch; and is now as like Jeffrey as he was then like Rubens. He did not of yore reach the highest altitudes of absurdity, till after the Socratic immersion he sustained at Alost; and luckily for his admirers he seems now to be in somewhat of the same wrathstirring pickle; for, from the purity of his Billingsgate, and the slavering fury he expresses at the friendship between Lord Byron and Mr Hunt, I should guess that he had been contumeliously refused admittance by the porter of one of these personages, and had the door of the other slapped in his face. You may now see what the editor of this Magazine has been partly aiming at. Apothecaries frequently sprinkle something pungent over a purge, to hinder the stomach from treating it as an emetic, and rejecting it on the spot. Nothing but a little startling blasphemy, or the hope of meeting with some communication from such pens as yours and Dr M'Crie's, could procure a moment's attention to the trash of this Magazine.

The little article already furnished by Dr M'Crie, I have not read; and I hope I shall

never again be referred for any production of of" Blackwood's

your or his

pen, to the

pages

Edinburgh Magazine.”

I am far from expecting that he or you will declare war on innocent mirth and recreation; that you will exhort a bridegroom to look like an undertaker, or a lover to court from the Lamentations; or that you will even press to its sternest limits the inexpediency of " foolish talking and jesting." Religion, like a well-made coat, sits so easy upon you both, as to be neither stiff nor morose. But the act of profanity to which I have now directed your attention, is of so vile and disgraceful a nature, that the virtue which would wink at it for a moment, deserves to lose her eyesight for ever. The prevalent laxity of morals will never be admitted by you as a reason for relaxing the curb on licentiousness that is entrusted to your hands, or weakening the efficacy of the example you are expected to shew. You are not one of those censors who demonstrate their charity in making allowance for what is, at the expense of their zeal in contending for what ought to be; nor are you one of those ministers who can satisfy