the mutton-fed mouthing of Waithman, the proceedings of Whig dinners, the hootings of radical heather-blooters, (thank you, Hogg, for the word,) or the Billingsgate slang of bum-bailiff magistrates at Bow-street and else where.

Let me tell the whole story, Leginning with the beginning, as the giant said to the ram. Perry, of the Morning Chronicle, was gathered to his fathers, and another editor lied in his stead. Hang me, if, after all, I can think angrily of Jamie Pirie. Whig he was, to be sure, but it was all in the way of trade. True also it is, that Coleman's line,

"Brisk as a flea, and ignorant as dirt," painted him to the life. Gentleman Hazlitt has supplied us in the Edinburgh with a fine sample of his ignorance; but, Heaven help us! if we were to quarrel with all the good people of our acquaintance who happen to be ignoramuses, we should thin our visiting list most awfully. He affected learning, to be sure, which was rather a bore. It was a great sight to see him with Porson, who was married to his sister, shewing off want of knowledge, at the rate of nine knots an hour. There sat the great Grecian, Lycophron's Proteus, (see Wakefield to Fox,) ο γελως απήχθετο και δάκρυ, unmoved at the nonsense, swallowing potations pottle deep in silence, meditating, most probably, some truculent epigram, some assassinating iambics, or some string of stringing jingles, at the expense of his erudite entertainer. As Porson bore with him, so well may we. Then his briskness; his doing fine gentleman; his ball-dancing; his compliments to the ladies; among whom he fancied himself irresistible-were inexpressibly amusing. We all have our follies and vanities, so I shall easily pardon Perry for these foibles. I honour his memory, for qualities which I honour wherever I find them. He was a man of strict editorial integrity, profound secrecy, considerable intrepidity, undeviating steadiness in keeping his promises, and fast allegiance to his party. Imprisonment or damages never shook him into betraying anything intrusted to his faith. Even afterquarrels, or defection from Whiggery,

never induced him to give up any man who had compromised himself with him. He was honourable in his pecuniary concerns-a firm friend-a liberal paymaster-I might almost say, a munificent patron. Then his very consistency, Kit, ought to win him favour in the eyes of us thick-and-thin people, who hate sneakers, vacillators, shufflers, conciliators, half-measure men, all species and genera of the Pluckless. I just stop for a moment, in order to take a caulker, to wash my mouth after having given utterance to the name of that shabby rout, whose claims on humanity seem scarce calcu lable; for nine Pluckless make a journeyman tailor. There he was, year after year, singing the same song, unruffled by disappointed prophecy, or undeterred by convicted falsehood. He prophesied that England would be beaten by the Jacobins, by the convention, by Buonaparte, by everybody— that our navy would be exterminated, our army annihilated-that we would be kicked out of Spain-that we would lose India-that our agriculture was gone-our funds broken-our credit lost-All, of course, the acts of ministers, who were regularly called asses, goats, geese, ganders, apes, incapables, blockheads,dunder-pates, jobbernowls, noodles; as many nicknames, in short, as the fouaciers of Lerne poured on the subjects of Gargantua.* These very ministers, nevertheless, did all they said they would do, and did not suffer any of the calamities predicted by the brazen head of Whiggery. They beat everybody who came against them, right and left; and preserved entire the honour, character, credit, and institutions of the country. It did not matter a fig; still they were destined to undergo the pitiless storm; still doomed to be pronounced stupid and blockheadish. There is something magnanimous in this intrepid unvarying assurance. Light lie the stones upon his bones! He was, moreover, a jolly batterer, who never looked for a soft word when he could get a hard one; for which I respect him, that being a fashion of my own.

Perry, as I have said already, died, and another editor lied in his stead; but he left not his mantle behind. His trust-worthy qualities had procured

him the confidence of the Whigs. Lord Holland, or Latly Holland, would not scruple to tip him a paragraph, or intrust him with a political lampoon. Earl Grey occasionally vented his bile through Perry's columns. Hobhouse sometimes obliged the public in the same way; as did many other ingenious persons of quality of the Whiggish persuasion. I never heard, it is true, that the Duke of Bedford was ever a contributor to any extent; but that, in all probability, arose from the innate modesty of that enlightened philosopher. But even without writing a line, their patronage conferred a great value on the paper in another way. Secrets, even cabinet secrets, ooze out, every now and then, in certain classes of society. The Opposition leaders, who are on the qui vive for such things, pick them up in various ways. The upper rank of London society is drawn from a very small class; as their houses are very large, and they have a rage for filling them, it is altogether impossible to make political differences a ground of exclusion of gens comme il faut. In point of fact, it is not thought of. The Duke of Devonshire, for instance, all through the winter, entertains, almost every evening, two or three hundred people, of his own class of society of course, at his great house in Piccadilly. Where would he get those people if he were to go look for Whiggism as a sine qua non? Happy am I to say, nowhere. Men and women of this caste are consequently always mixing together, and it is almost impossible that something would not casually fall from Tory gentlemen or their ladies which could be turned to Whig account. There is in reality at all times an infinity of information, valuable to newspapers, floating in that circle, which, of course, I need not tell you, is quite inaccessible to the Knights of the Post, for such fellows could hardly expect to be let into the kitchen. Here it was Perry shone. He had always a fancy for rubbing his skirts to quality, and as he spent his very handsome income freely and genteelly, he moved in a very respectable circle, and had personal access to the nobility and gentry of his party. By this means articles appeared occasionally in his paper, which astonished the parties concerned, who could not conjecture how what they thought was a well-kept

secret had got into print, and on such a side. Now, I well know that nothing could be meaner on the part of the Whig communicators than this pimping way of coming at intelligence, and they know it too; but they did it nevertheless, they being, as then said a thousand times, the meanest of all mankind. Look, for example, at the connection of Hume with Henry Constantine Jennings-Abercrombie's motion about Mr Arbuthnot's letter, which had casually fallen into his hands-Brougham's speeches about the late Irish Attorney-General's private letter, which he (B.) knew to have been purloined, and was obviously not intended for any one's inspection but that of the friend to whom it was written, with ten thousand other such acts of the faction. Do not we all know that the Whig Laureate, Tom Moore, actually published in the Morning Chronicle the substance of conversations which had occurred at the Royal table itself, to which he had been incautiously admitted? and that the most pungent and piquant things in those decorous poems, the Twopenny Post Bag, and the Fudge Family, which are lauded to the stars by the Whig abhorrers of personality, are derived from information picked up in the progress of social intercourse, and perverted to filthy slanders on reputation, male and female, which honest Thomas knew were not true. But though this kind of assassin treachery is a regular part of Whig tactique, yet few would wish it known that they were engaged in such business. Accordingly, though Perry was made the spitting-pot of their slaver, yet the good folks had a shyness in committing themselves to his successor. True it is, that the Morning Chronicle is still the great Whig public organ. You see in it the indications of forthcoming storms in Parliament and elsewhere against Ministers, to whom it consequently acts as a manometer. A week or so before

Mr Tierney comes down like a wolf on the fold,

or Mr Tierney's ill-governed troops make a sally, the Morning Chronicle teems with paragraph and article tending to pave the way for the attack. This shews, as I said before, that it is still the public organ; but the private information is gone, and its place is

Alled by blockhead correspondence from abroad, written by some atrocious garretteer.

The paper, even before Perry went the way of all flesh, was feeling the general calamity under which the Whig press, from Jeffrey to Hunt, suffered, in consequence of the failure of all their predictions, and the general prosperity of the country. But after his death, things, as was natural to expect, mended, as sour beer does in summer. A pánic seized on the proprietors, and Perry's representatives determined on selling out. After some negotiations, Clement of the Observer, a man perhaps more extensively connected with the press than any other man in the world, an old routier de guerre, be came the purchaser. He imagined that with his connections, experience, &c. he would be able to infuse new spirit into the concern, and bring it back again to its ancient palmy state. Accordingly he gave about L.15,000, -a very large sum, I think an absurdly large sum, but that is no concern of mine-for it, and glad were the sellers. Clement, from his old experience on the Observer, the great paper for exhibiting Warren's jet blacking, Day and Martin, Tom Bish and brethren, Steers's Opodeldoc, Sir Robert Wilson's begging box, Prince's Russia Oil, with its extra valuable ingredient, &c. &c. placed a deep reliance on puffing, and accordingly called an aggregate meeting of the bellows-blowers of London Town. Thither came the gentlemen, descending like Mercury from the celestial regions of the garret, or breaking way like the earth-born Tityus from the subterranean bowels of the cellar. Thither came they, redolent of tobacco much adulterated with brown paper, or the fumes of last night's gin-grog, or this morning's gum-tickler taken in lieu of breakfast. Some perhaps smelt only of beer, for all mankind cannot expect to indulge in expensive luxuries. The principal feature of the general costume of the company, was the coat closely buttoned to the throat, so as to prevent any impertinent investigations as to the state of the shirt. An intrepid assurance distinguished every brow, a dauntless contempt of principle shone forth in every eye. They are, indeed, men of liberal ideas, and, in general, members of the Descamisadvi. When they met in conclave, like the magi

cians in the last canto of Thalaba, Clement made to them a short speech, enforced by that mighty figure of rhetoric which lies in the breeches-pocket. "Puff," quoth Clement, and forth issued a volume of stinking breath. Tó drop the allegory, which I am afraid I have hammered out too long, no exertion in the puff-line was sparedand puff the first was to inform the public, that the paper was sold for forty thousand pounds-a circumstance which, if true, would insure to the purchaser a Christian burial when he hanged himself, which it is proba ble he would have done before the end of the year. No Coroner's Jury could hesitate to bring in a verdict of Lunacy on the strength of that one act. This puff outrageous was sent to all the provincial papers of England, Scotland, and Ireland for insertion, without distinction of their politics, with a bribe or advertisement fee, (never boggle at a word,) varying from two to five guineas. Hazlitt then got employed by Jeffrey, in return for having called him the King of men, and he too touched the coin to panegyrize the Morning Chronicle, at the expense of all its brethren in arms, in the degraded pages of Blue and Yellow.

This was of course eagerly extracted and set in general circulation. Cobbett was induced, I know not how, to devote some pages of his Register, which is still published, to an enumeration of the merits of the Morning Chronicle, in most insulting comparison with his old and inveterate foe, Anna Brodie, alias base old Walter, alias the Bloody old Times. In short, such puffery never was heard of; and the worst of all is, that it in all probability will not do. However, it is not easy to say, until the next Session of Parliament is over, how it will turn out. Clement boasts that he has an infinity of clever literary men in his pay. I doubt the fact: I know he turned off some half-dozen or so off the old staff, thereby perhaps incurring no great loss; but I venture to say, that their place is filled up with rubbish of no superior quality.

Meanwhile, the Old Times viewed the whole concern with jealous leer malign. It was stung to its very core by the disparagement with which its name was mentioned by everybody, and determined to shew fight. The great occasion of a Whig dinner in

Glasgow given to Brougham, was fixed on as a crisis. Down to the mighty city of Saint Mungo, the metropolis of cold punch, the pride of Scotland, and the western land, went the emissaries of the rival prints, and the local absurdity of the press on the spot, was enlisted in their cause. The dinner came and went. Brougham was great; Mylne was great; Lawless was great; Pillans was great; the Duke was magnificent. It was a great day for Europe. The French were driven out of Spain, and the ministers out of the cabinet; and The Liberty of the Press was given amid the usual lamentations over the inflictions they suffer by its means, from our unrelenting strappadoes. Lord Archibald turned out the company at a seasonable hour, by drinking, Good-night, much to the discontent of the half dozen, or so, Glasgowians, who happened to be present, and whose palates, annoyed by the unusual libations of the claret, yearned for the revivifying smack of the hot toddy, at the small hours of morn. The tongues of the eloquent were mute, and the pens of the erudite were let loose. Mr Prentice, of the Glasgow Chronicle, outdid himself in the splendour of his description. He was awestruck at the exhibition, and every second sentence of his exordium breathed the very intensity of adoration. Nine columns were dispatched by Dowling of the Morning Chronicle-a goodly brigade of the gormandizing oratorywhile the poor Bloody Old Woman of Printing-house Square had not a line. Coffee-house and coffee-shop, clubroom and ale-bench, wherever the Whigs congregate, rung with calls for the Morning Chronicle, while the Times was left as unread as if it had been the last poem of Barry Cornwall. This was a cut to the bone. A blankness overspread all the countenances of the scribes of the Bloody Journal. You would have thought that Barry O'Meara had been seen that morning buying a new horse-whip. What was to be done! The Chronicle must be put down, and the only question that remained to be settled was, how this was to be effected. A bright thought struck some of the highly-principled members of the conclave of gentlemen. A packet has miscarried, said the first gentleman-or we imagine it has miscarried. It must have been stolen-ay, and stolen by some of the VOL. XIV.

Chronicle people. Bravo! quoth the second; clear as a column of double pica. Who is on the beat for that paper? Which of their people is taking the air on the north road? Dowling was discovered to be the man, and they were determined to make a spectacle of him. He was to be accused of coach robbery. It was a touch worthy of the print which made the charge on John Bull, which, if it had been done viva voce, and not in type, would have sent the "gentleman" to decorate the front of the Old Bailey, or to swell the list of our countrymen in Australasia.

How Dowling was arrested-brought up-let loose-how he tossed up his hat, and wrote letters to his employers all that, and those, the details of the affair, are they not written in the folios of the newspapers? With them I meddle not. As I said at the beginning of my letter, I know nothing of Dowling. I have a dim recollection of his horse-whipping, or being horsewhipped by, Orator Hunt, some years ago; and a misty vision of seeing him in London, surrounded by a halo of constables, to protect him from the vagabonds of that illustrious buffoon. But I write merely to expose a little of the inside of the London pressthe shifts its people have recourse to, the honourable methods in which they carry on the war against one another, the real value of the information they possess, and the vast importance things are to them, which are but the laughing-stock of the rest of mankind. Conceive a rational being with a soul to be sent some hundred miles, kept writing at the rate of a forty-horse power steam-engine, obliged to squabble with mail-coachmen, coach proprietors, clerks, boots, &c. &c., and, after all, lugged up by the collar as a thief; for what? In order that the good folks of Cockaigne may be able to know what it was Brougham, and Denman, and Lawless, and M'Faddel, said at a tavern in Glasgow! I weep for the degradation of human nature. To listen to these people is bad enough-to read what they have said, is sufficient to make a man sick in his stomach; but to report it-to write it out, must be the devil itself. O dura missorum ilia! Yet it is comical that the poor people so employed, are quite proud of themselves. It is a kindly dispensation of Providence, after all. We see, in the same way, men and women la3 T

bouring under severe personal defects quite ignorant of their existence, and flattering themselves that they are beauties, in the style of Adonis and Ve

nus.

The most sensible remark made during the whole business, was by a witness, a coach-clerk, I believe, who was examined before the magistrates. He was asked, What was the value of the parcel alleged to be stolen? Now, Kit, the parcel contained the collected Whig wisdom of the West-the patriotism of the noble House of Hamilton-the high principles of Brougham -the decorous eloquence of Mr Nero Denman the imported sagacity of the well-stuffed Irishman-the professorial dicta of a Mylne-and the well-weighed political intelligence of a M'Gregor.

At what price did the clairvoyant clerk value this glorious cargo ?-Its weight in diamonds, at least ?-No-Well, then, in gold ?-Ah, no-At what, then? Why, said the inexorable controller of coachmen, " It is not worth TWOPENCE." Not more than the sixth part of the price an Edinburgh jury fixed on the character of my Lord Archibald !

The Whig dinner, the Whig eloquence, the Whig wit, the Whig principles of Glasgow, not worth twopence!

O, 'tis so moving, I can write no

more.

Yours, therefore, without further delay, Dear N.

TIMOTHY TICKLER.

Southside, Nov. 1.

SHAKESPEARE.

I CONFESS I don't exactly remember any instance, Mr Editor, in which your work has puffed forthcoming publications; but I have a matter, nevertheless, so important in hand, that I shall give it the chance of a line in your Magazine.

My design, sir, is for a book (within reasonable price) to be entitled, "HINTS TO GENTLEMEN OF SLENDER INCOMES;" and these Hints, proceeding (I should tell you) from a gentleman of no Income at all, will amount to a Treatise upon the readiest methods of getting into Debt, and also upon the eftest management, generally, of Creditors; enriched with a running Commentary upon the avoidance of bailiffs; rules and expedients for getting rid of duns; and a few arguments (supplementary) for the repeal of the Insolvent Act.

It is laid down in I don't recollect which of the books of Don Quixote, by that admirable moralist and philosopher, Sancho Panza, that there are but two sorts of people in the world those who have money, and those who are without it; and, if he (Sancho)

does not so contend, I am prepared to contend for him, that the latter of these classes ought to live at the cost and charge of the former.

That this is law, I have precedent; for, from time immemorial, vast numbers of those who have, especially" Fashion Mongers" of all descriptions, have been treated by common consent as the feræ naturæ of society;-that this is law, I declare upon principle, for, answer me who can,-If those who "have not" are not to live upon those who "have," in what other manner are they to live?

It would be a pretty excuse truly, for a gentleman who was found naked in the street, to say that he went about without breeches, because he had no money to pay for them.

The press, Mr Editor, in this age, aids pursuits of every description. One writer counsels the "cutters of their acquaintance." Another assists" the bearers of walking-sticks and umbrellas." A third ingenious person offers "a shilling's worth of advice to any gentleman who happens to be looking for a horse;" and a friend of mine (a