So the world in general look on this "professional man of genius and virtue" as a pedant, a barbarian, a poor creature, and a brute. Wicked world! No wonder that we have earthquakes. He told us already, in his Table-Talk, that all the people of London will not look on his books, for fear of being thought Cockneys; and, by this account, it would seem that his person gets little better treatment among them. The old lamentation over his works is here continued. He confesses (p. 357,) that all he can do is to "glitter, flutter, buzz, spawn, die, stink, and be forgotten;" and (p. 358,) that, when princes scowl on him, which I should suppose they never do, as I cannot conceive how Hazlitt could come within scowl of a prince, he is obliged to hope, that "the broad shining face of the people MAY turn to him with a favourable aspect." May turn! Vain hope! Have you not already informed us, that people are afraid of looking into your books, lest they should be suspected of Cockneyism, or perhaps because they dreaded undergoing that dire metamorphosis by merely poring over your pages. He grumbles at booksellers for refusing to buy his books, (p. 359,) while they are so inconsiderate as to take the same stuff in fragments as filling for unhappy magazines. As to his reputation, he gives up that entirely, by admitting, that almost the only writers who can keep their reputation above water are anonymous critics; unless he has the vanity to make himself one of the almosts, which the poor fellow is too candid to think of. Yet what he wants is not much. He is ready to give up eternal fame for a newspaper puff, (p. 357); and as he was once, and long, if indeed he be not still, one of the glorious company himself, that, I am sure, he can find no great difficulty in getting, by sporting, in favour of a brother of the quill, a shilling or two on an extra go of brandy and water at the Wrekin, or a tumbler of hot and hot British Hollands at the Cart and Horses, or any other fashionable hotel resorted to by those eminent literati. There, no doubt, Mr Hazlitt is great; and I am proud to perceive that he has no mock modesty about him on the point; for he candidly draws a simile from his own long experience in such campaigns, assuring us, (p.

354,) "that the mixing of liquors is no doubt a bad thing, and muddles the brain ; but, in a certain stage of society, is perhaps unavoidable,” i. e. in the stage of society of the Cow and Cauliflower, or other place blessed by the presence of the august body, which kindly informs the public mind of all passing events, and directs the genius of the age, at three pounds, odd shillings and pence, paid weekly during the session of Parliament.

The rest of the introduction to the consideration of his subject, he has filled with utter nonsense about painting, (for H. was bred a water-colour painter, which profession he gave up on finding that he could not earn salt to his porridge by it, it being universally acknowledged that he could not delineate a churn-staff, and on that ground thinks himself admirably qualified to talk on gusto and vertu,) and common-place stuff about trite literature. It concludes with this splendid sentence, which, if even Mr Jeffrey the Great himself can interpret for me, he shall be to me for ever a Magnus Apollo. "If our several contemporararies were to criticize one author as a constant habit," what then?—" there would be no end of the repeated reflections, and continually lessening perspective of cavils and objections, which would resemble nothing in NATURE but"-what in NATURE? Pray guess, good reader," but the Caffee [sic] des Milles [sic] Colonnes!!" P. 360. Alas! poor Jeffrey! criticizing one author as a constant habit! what an idea! and then the reflections, and the perspective, and the nature! and, proh pudor! the French! Why, dear Mr Jeffrey, these fellows will make us suspect you of having forgotten the most childish acquirements.

But to proceed-I hinted, some paragraphs ago, that Mr Jeffrey has altered this article a good deal since it made its first appearance on his writing-table. The two chief alterations, however, must be allowed to be the curtailments which the production has undergone, in respect of the notices which it originally set forth touching Cobbett and your own Magazine. Both of these curtailments appear to me to have been injudicious. If such an article was to appear at all, it should have appeared with all its original beauties and defects up

on its head. It could then have been said, "Poh, Mr Jeffrey was busy-or he was from home—and this article was stuck in without his knowledge or revision. It is a blot; but what book is without a blot now and then? You must not condemn the Review for the sake of one production, hastily and unwarily suffered to appear in it." Many are the times when shifts like these have been resorted to, and with tolerable success, by the patrons of the Blue and Yellow. But here it will not do: there is evidence-there is the clearest evidence-that the great Mr Jeffrey's own pen has been at work. As it stands, the article is a mere piece of stottery;-it is incomplete; it is imperfect; it is curtailed; it is manc and mutilated; whole paragraphs have been scored out others have been clippped and docked. The thing is not what it was meant to be; nobody can glance it over without being satisfied that Mr Jeffrey has bona fide combed and carved upon the Cockney abortion-that HE has really edited HAZLITT!

The notice of Cobbett, as it now appears, is really the most pitiable makebelieve I ever met with." Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike," is truly a line which the man who edited this has a right to quote. I have no sort of doubt in my own mind that the Cockney's original MS. contained three or four pages of puff upon Cobbett.-Hazlitt, for one, never can mention Cobbett without letting his breath out in his praise; and I approve of William Hazlitt for admiring, which he really appears to do from his heart, the great and singular merits of William Cobbett. But here was a ticklish piece of business for Mr Jeffrey to have any hand in. Many years ago, as, indeed, even the extant paragraph acknowledges, Brougham made a savage attack on Cobbett's character in the Edinburgh Review. Cobbett did not suffer from that, of course, but he resented it notwithstanding. For the last ten years, he has badgered Jeffrey; and, to use his own powerful expression, passim, "all the vile, canting, coxcomb gang of the Edinburgh Review." This has invariably been Cobbett's languageat least it was so until within the last two or three months. He has lashed their tergiversations; he has exposed their gross errors in politics and political economy; he has moved the world's

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laughter with his jeers about their prophecies; he has battered them, in a word, on the ground which was common to them and him, with a vigour only equalled by that which you and your friends have exhibited against them quoad alia. He has been the other great thorn in Jeffrey's side. The moment you gave him a pause, Cobbett was sure to dig in-the moment the old sergeant cried halt, plunge went your spur again.-In short, between you, you kept Mr Jeffrey in eternal hot water; and I believe he would often have been greatly puzzled, if anybody had put Fortunatus' cap on his head for an instant, which of the two to wish first in perdition and the abyss. Of late, however, as I have hinted, there have been some symptoms of a change in this matter. have seen Mr Brougham puffing Mr Cobbett's Cottage Economy in the Edinburgh Review. The book deserved all that was said in its praise, that is true; but still, to see Mr BROUGHAM puffing his old arch enemy was something. Then we have seen Mr Brougham presenting Mr Cobbett's petitions about the national debt, the equitable adjustment, &c., in the House of Commons-introducing Mr William as a "distinguished writer"-" a man of original and acknowledged genius," and the like. We have seen this, and we have seen Mr Cobbett, on his part, devoting many whole columns of his Register to the puffing of Mr Brougham. We have seen Mr Cobbett, who, only a year before, concluded one of the severest diatribes he ever penned with these words-" Lawyer Brougham praises him-THAT IS ENOUGH!!!"We have heard Mr Cobbett, who treated Mr Brougham in this style of supreme scorn not twelve months before, singing out about Mr Brougham's" learning," "genius," "honesty," and what not, as if he had been to be paid a guinea for every pretty word he could produce. We have seen all this, and we were of course aware that some underhand work had been going on between Messrs Brougham and Cobbett. But still there was no puffery of Jeffrey in Cobbettno: the treaty between Brougham and him appeared to be strictly a personal one. The abuse of Mr Jeffrey and of the Review itself still continued. Brougham's praises were ever and anon wound up with wonder

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how such a great man could stoop to have anything to do with such " gang" as Jeffrey's. Under these circumstances, what could Mr Francis Jeffrey do with this Cockney's puff upon Mr William Cobbett? The puff of Cobbett by Brougham had indeed softened Cobbett towards Brougham personally; but the rage and contempt of the man for Mr Jeffrey, and for Mr Jeffrey's Review, were still expressed without stint or stay. Should he insert Hazlitt's puff, perhaps Cobbett might thank Hazlitt for it; but here was proof enough that he would not thank Mr Jeffrey. He could not, therefore, bring himself to put Hazlitt's trash in as it stood-he could not do this. He had gone as far in the way of stooping to Cobbett as he could bring himself to do without receiving some sort of intimation that Cobbett would accept of his humiliation, and be merciful in future. At the same time, he had already suffered so shockingly, that he durst not for the life of him dream of putting out the puff, and inserting an attack of his own penmanship in its room. He was not so fool-hardy as to dream of this. What then, amidst all this net-work of stultifying difficulty, remained for the noble Francis Jeffrey?-Why, just to do what he has done-to score out all the hack's hearty laudation, and retain just enough to shew that there had been such a thing in the article, and that he had, in his editorial magnanimity, erased it.-Hiatus valde deflendus! But, my word for it, this gentleman is not the boy to allow anything he has written to remain unprinted, and therefore unpaid; and we shall have it all in good time in some other corner of the "Periodical Press."

But only to think of the paragraph which immediately succeeds this precious one about Cobbett! It is a puff of THE EXAMINER, which the Edinburgh Review is made to say stands "next to Cobbett's," (among the weekly papers,)" in point of talent." The Examiner classed next to Cobbett in anything is odd enough, but, "in point of talent," is really the joke of all jokes ;-the Examiner, that has tumbled down first from a shilling to tenpence then from tenpence to sevenpence-halfpenny-then to sixpence -and now to four pence;-the Examiner, that, even with his reduced prices, has less circulation at this mo

ment than almost any Sunday-paper in existence, and that circulates among a more ignoble class of readers than perhaps any one of the array-the Cockney Court-Gazette !-the weekly trash-work of the Hunts!-Oh, my dear Mr Jeffrey, this indeed is a tumble!

I confess I am a little puzzled with the last sentence of this character of the Examiner. Is it Hazlitt's? Is it Jeffrey's? Is it a pic-nic affair ?— "With the exception of a little egotism, and twaddle, and flippancy and dogmatism about religion and morals, and mawkishness about firesides, and furious Buonaparteism, and a vein of sickly sonnet-writing, we suspect the Examiner must be allowed to be THE ABLEST and MOST RESPECTABLE of the publications that issue from the Weekly Press." This is the sentence as it stands, near the bottom of page 368. How-why-by what fatuity it was allowed to appear there, I confess my utter inability to make any conjecture.

If it be Hazlitt's, what can be so exquisite as a rebuke of egotism and twaddle from the worthy, who, in his very last book, (no, the Liber Amoris was the last, but in the one immediately preceding the Liber Amoris,) took occasion to tell the world that it was ON THE 10TH OF AUGUST, 1794, HE first read the Nouvelle Eloise, "over a bottle of sherry, and at the inn of Llangollen,"-who, in the penult number of the Liberal, favoured us with all those charming particulars about the old Unitarian preacher his father, and his own first introduction to Mr Coleridge,-whose excessive and illustrious egotism is, in short, one of the most striking features throughout the whole of his lucubrations. If it be Hazlitt's again, if it really be Hazlitt's, can anything be so superb as a sneer against "flippancy and dogmatism about religion and morals," from the author of the Loves of "H." and Sally in our Alley-the man who has just insulted the public with publishing a full and particular account of his laborious and deliberate, but unsuccessful attempts, to seduce, beneath her father's roof, (he being at the time a married man, and the father of a family,) a poor servant girl who waited upon him in his lodginghouse? Egotism and flippancy about religion and morals, indeed! But no,

no-this must be an interpolationthis must be Mr Jeffrey's. And, if the sentence be his, will that mend the matter? Turn to the article on Buonaparte, in this very number of the Review, and see Buonaparte there gravely characterized as-But do let us take the very words (they occur at the bottom of page 515.)

"We deem it impossible for any one, how strongly soever he may have been prejudiced against Napoleon, to rise from the perusal and study of these details, without an intimate persuasion that few great men have ever been more WORTHY OF ESTEEM. His insatiable ambition remains, in reality, the only charge against his character; and it must be allowed to have been mingled with as much of good as ever was known to be compatible with a thirst for power. The destruction of pernicious abuses-the improvement of the condition of the people at large went hand in hand with every act by which he sought his own personal aggrandizement. In many cases this was the necessary consequence of the debased condition of the countries he overran and subdued. Any change, for instance, must unavoidably have proved beneficial to Spain and Italy; nor could he conquer them without bettering their condition in every essential particular. But it is only just to add, that his own inclination was to root out antiquated evils, and that he placed his chiefest glory in being the regenerator of the modern world. The volumes before us afford evidence, in every page, of his thoughts, at least during the last ten years of his reign, having been all directed towards raising for himself this most durable monument, by entitling himself to the gratitude of all ages, for rendering to mankind the inestimable service of freeing them from the thraldom of invete

rate abuses in church and state."

These words are worthy of being written in letters of brass. Buonaparte more worthy of esteem than alinost any great man that ever existed! No charge against Buonaparte's character but the thirst of power! Buonaparte thought of nothing from 1804 to 1814, but "entitling himself to the gratitude of all ages for rendering to inankind the inestimable service of freeing them from the thraldom of inveterate abuses in church and state!" These are expressions on which I am not such a ninny as to offer any remark. They are, unquestionably, however, the ne plus ultra of furious Buonaparteism, and they occur in the same num

VOL. XIV.

ber of the Review in which " furious Buonaparteism" is mentioned as constituting one of the few deductions which must be made from the general "respectability" of the Examiner paper. Another of these deductions is said to be "a vein of sickly sounetwriting." Now, who is this sickly sonnetteer? Is it anybody but that very Cockneys, the most sickly and disgustidentical Leigh Hunt, King of the ing of all whose poetical productions (the incestuous Rimini story) is characterized, three or four pages farther down, in this very article, as "an elegant and pathetic poem, by the editor of an opposition paper." How are we to reconcile all these contradictions? I, for one, cannot read the whole sentence, be it whose it may, over again, without being convinced that even the devil can speak truth at times. Truth he hates; but truth, like murder, will out.-Just pause for a moment, and read the words over again. Well now: Would anybody desire a more intelligible definition than that which the Edinburgh Review itself furnishes, when it talks of "an able and respectable paper, which has no faults except that it is flippant about religion and morals, (which, being interpreted, means that it wages uniform war against the principles of chastity and decency, and overflows with eternal blasphemies against the faith of the Bible,)—that it is full of mawkishness about firesides, egotism, twaddle, and sickly sonnet-writing"that is to say, in other words, that it is full of Cockneyism and Leigh Hunt -and, finally, that it is full of ultraBuonaparteism, which means neither more nor less than that it is, like the Edinburgh Review itself, characterized by the basest Jacobinism, the most unrelenting hostility to all the established institutions of Christian Europe, in "church and state."

I shall say no more for the present about this "most respectable publication."

And yet, ere I leave the Cockneys, I may perhaps as well take notice very shortly it shall be-of the passage a little way down about Mr John Keats. It is said by this Edinburgh Reviewer, that John was attacked as a bad poet, merely because he had been praised in the Examiner in a way quite unconnected with politics, for some of his juvenile verses; and that he would

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have fared very differently, had he flung King Leigh Hunt's puff in his face, and bowed at the knee of William Gifford, editor of the Quarterly Review, and author of the Baviad and Mæviad. Now, the whole of this is made up of direct mis-statement and base misrepresentation. In the first place, long before any Tory Review whatever took notice of Keats, he had not merely been puffed in the Examiner, but he had put forth sonnets upon sonnets of his own, in honour of Leigh Hunt, calling Leigh Hunt " a kind martyr," &c. because he had been clapped into Newgate for a beastly libel upon his sovereign; and, in short, had identified himself in a hundred different ways, with all the bad political principles, as well as with all the bad poetical taste, of the Cockney school. Here, therefore, is one clear mis-statement as to matter of fact. In the second place, it was not, as is so plainly insinuated, the author of the Baviad and Mæviad who commenced the attack upon Keats. Keats had been dished utterly demolished, and dished by Blackwood-long before Mr Gifford's scribes mentioned his name. The Quarterly Review did not invent the name "Cockney-School," but only adopted that name after it had been introduced by Blackwood into universal use, and had in fact become as much an integral part of the language of English criticism, as any other phrase in the dictionary. It is then absurd, and worse than absurd, to say that Mr Keats would have altered his condition in any respect whatever, by trying to conciliate the smile of the Quarterly editor. It is possible, and, indeed, it is highly probable, that he was vexed with finding himself, and the rest of the Cockney school, characterized in the Quarterly by the phrases which Blackwood had invented. But that was a mere flea-bite.All the other Reviews had adopted the tone ere then. The concern was utterly undermined three years ere the Quarterly put a single pick-axe to its foundation. As for the absurd story about Mr John Keats having been put to death by the Quarterly, or by any other criticism, I confess I really did not expect to meet with a repetition of such stuff in the Edinburgh Review. If people die of these wounds, what a prince of killers, and king of murderers, must

Mr Jeffrey be! In law, the intention makes the crime, and he who fires a pistol at my body is a murderer, although he happens to miss me, or although I recover of the wound he inflicts. Granting, then, that this is the law, what are we to say to the man who cut up Byron's Hours of Idleness? That review, surely, was meant to be as severe as any review that was ever penned touching poor Johnny Keats. The article on Lord Thurlow-the article proh pudor! on Joanna Bailliethe article on Tom Little's smutty Poems-all these, and a hundred more, were at least intended to murder poetical reputations; and as for the reviewers of Keats really meaning to murder, not the poetaster, but the boy-the living individual Johnny-why this, I suppose, is more than the Examiner himself will hold up his face to. This Edinburgh Reviewer, to conclude, reproaches very bitterly the Quarterly Reviewer of Keats for mentioning his profession, and says, that his being a young apothecary would, under different circumstances, have been converted into a ground, not of censure, but of praise. All this may be true; but I would just ask of Mr Jeffrey, who it was that, in the pages of this same Edinburgh Review, quizzed Mr Thelwall for being a tailor a trade at least as harmless as the other, I suppose? Thelwall replied to that, by telling somebody or other connected with the Edinburgh Review, that his father or grandfather, I forget which, was a barber. This had the effect of stopping for some time the stream of allusions to professions, &c. in the Edinburgh Review. Why did not Mr Keats try the same trick with the Quarterly? But the truth is, that all this is shocking stuff. Who seriously thinks the worse of a man for being an apothecary, or for being the son of a barber? No such absurdities exist in this age of the world. And the person, if such there be, who really feels the least annoyance from any such trifles as these, must certainly boast the manhood, not of a barber, nor of an apothecary, but of a most superlative tailor. If John Keats cared for being called an apothecary, being one, he must really have been a greater goose than even I ever took him for. Such allusions have been in use ever since there were books and reviewers in the world. Good heavens! what would become of Moliere, Fielding, Smollett,