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for a, again, Dr. Pangloss!!) So much for spiritual, theatrical, critical, and poetical inspiration.

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This reverend person's' knowledge of the style of Milton is as great as his knowledge of that of Juvenal, -of English as of Latin. Let us elucidate.' Here follows a passage meant to be very fine; it is the Millenarian's usual jumble of metaphors, in which, while attacking mine and his own, he favours me with his countenance by patronizing and appropriating one of those which he attacks (the concluding passage) with true Milesian coolness. The reverend gentleman's countenance, in this particular, is far from handsome. Milton's Paradise Lost, he says (page 213)

is copious and stately, but NATURAL and characteristic; in description lavish and picturesque; in sentiment high-toned and sincere. Its very perusal is an act of devotion!! The world and its countless interests, its joys and sorrows; its idle, but seducing daydreams fades off our minds. We breathe a loftier atmosphere, &c.' The excessive absurdity of this magniloquent rigmarole I goodhumouredly spare; since a laugh is worth something, and one ought to be grateful. I shall say nothing of the reverend gentleman's Irish orthodoxy in recommending his bishop and brother-churchmen to imbue themselves with the study of Milton's mingled Socinianism and Arianism as an ACT OF DEVOTION!' But Milton is pronounced natural.' No one but a 'natural' would say so. Is it credible that any critical tyro, English or Irish, could venture to insult the reading public and the schoolmaster' (not the doctor, though he, too, is generally abroad') with such an affirmation? A schoolboy of a

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* The devil' is requested not to print this persona,' or 'parson.' We must write by the card,' and an a or e might undo us.' Mr. Croly's Spanish, by the way, is as bad as his bousy co-conspirator's French. See 'Monthly Magazine' (page 187 to 201). What degrading incompetency! What despicable and fraudulent pretence is this to criticism!!

fourth form would be justly flogged for such ignorance. Nothing but the little occasional disguises of the Irish doctor' could excuse the callous nudity of this exposure. Natural? why, reverend Sir, it is most unnatural; the artificial structure of his style is its most singular characteristic. But do not take my word: take that of the lexicographer Dr. Johnson, who knew something of English. He says that Milton's style is formed on a perverse and pedantic principle ;'-' he wrote no language, but has formed what Butler calls a Babylonish dialect;' that his diction

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so farremoved from common use,' that the reader, on opening his work, finds himself surprised by a new language,' and finally, that nothing but Milton's 'exalted genius' could reconcile us to its deformity.'

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This deformity' being the reverend Milesian's' Irish view of what is natural,' I here leave him to seek consolation or compotation with his learned and cacological colleague, Dr. Pangloss. They may compare notes as to what is common sense' or tact, and as to what is'natural' (illegitimate and softheaded are, I think, two of the meanings of this word, doctor!) All that remains is to turn the offenders off, and wish them an exit as little painful as possible. 'Farewell, then,' as Swift said to two similar colleagues*, beloved and loving pair! Few equals will you leave behind!'

In this advanced stage of the new farce of the 'Critics criticised,' the reader will probably feel little concern to see more than the drop-scene. It will not be requisite to waste my time or his in exposing paragraph by paragraph the scandalous bad faith with which the extracts from the Omnipresence,' with

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Battle of the Books.

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avowed effrontery, taken from the most incorrect edition, are garbled in the Monthly Magazine. The public verdict is, I feel convinced, given in my favour; and further exposure is superfluous. The calm and goodhumoured voice of truth will always prevail over the angry virulence of interested motive and obvious collusion. But it ought to be remarked, as an example of Irish compliment and Irish rhetoric, that Montgomery's irritable, noisy, and wrathful assailants, curiously concur in two defamatory charges which they bring against the reading public whom they address and the writing community to which they belong.' Let us elucidate.' They say, 1st., that the whole public, who purchased Montgomery's twelve editions, while they with obstinate dulness discouraged one edition of any work of the enraged objectors, are blocks more thick, stolid, and solid, than ever were used by barber or shipwright; a very nation of king logs: 2nd., that all the critical brethren of the assailants, appertaining to the almost entire town and country press, who approved the said twelve editions, and in fact chiefly caused the sale, were either fools or knaves; either most especial and portentously long-eared asses, or bribed hirelings. This is too flattering.' But hear both sides' is a sound English adage; and therefore I cannot conclude better (since such conclusion, too, will be in the comparing and temperate spirit of the whole pamphlet) than by opposing to the estimate of the Rev. George Croly, Dr. Magin, and all the other exes from the extinct New Times, that of the reverend critic's former employer-the Editor of the Times, whom the reverend and his colleagues so egregiously eulogize as a fool, a knave, and a hireling.

The author is, we understand, a very young man; but, in this production, he has displayed a depth and maturity of thought—a strength and justness of reasoning, which would Do HONOUR TO ANY WRITER OF THE PRESENT DAY. His versification combines, in no ordinary degree, energy and elegance; his figures are beautifully appropriate-they are never introduced merely at the suggestion of fancy, but are called in to illustrate some feeling of the mind, or some affection of the heart. A glowing spirit of fervid devotion distinguishes the whole work: in every page we find

"Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn!"

The author appears to have felt that he stood in the presence of Him whose greatness he was celebrating; to Him he has prayed for inspiration, and from Him he has received it. He describes with felicitous effect the presence of the Deity in all times and places-in the darkness of night, in the storms of winter, in the mild breath of spring, in the gorgeous glory of summer, and in the fruition of autumn. The author has inculcated this principle with a force and vigour worthy of the theme: he calls on his fellow-men, eloquently and affectionately, never to let the fact escape from their memory, that the Deity is ever present; and he argues that, where such a feeling exists, it must check the growth of evil, counteract the tendency of human nature to vice, and extend the empire of virtue. A purer body of ethics we have never read; and he who could peruse it without emotion, clothed as it is in the graceful garb of poetry, must have a VERY COld and insenSIBLE HEART.-The Times.'

Here is no flinching. Therefore, expende Annibalem. How much might you estimate, Mr. Croly, the purchase money of the Editor of the Times? Hence we might, by rule of three, infer what it would cost to bribe a theatrical critic of the same paper.

I have done for the present with Robert Montgomery's present assailants.

Fixed on the rack of Satire let them lie,

Fit garbage for the hellhound Infamy.

A new supplement, or a new pamphlet, as it may happen, will be ready for any more worthies of this Bavian and Mævian Conspiracy, nursed like sooterkins among the fetid and mouldy cinders of the extin

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" REPLY TO FRASER'S' AND THE MONTHLY'. guished New Times*,-whenever they may feel a stomach for the encounter. Neither their cause, their motives, nor their talents, are to be feared; and in one respect they are still less to be feared; since this ultra Sloppite clique, turned adrift by the prolonged decadence, and final extinction of the Ex-New Times, have uniformly Burked every paper and periodical, whether radical or ultra, into fatal connexion with which--generally by promises of more effectual PUFFING-Sometimes by the most impudent apostacy or treacherously ambidexter politics-they have since insinuated themselves. Perhaps I may be induced, at my leisure, and in good time, to amuse the public with the secret memoirs of the Conspiracy.

Mox in reluctantes dracones.

That I may not appear to deal in vague and causeless insinuations, a few unmasking words may be dropped Dr. Magin, an Ex-Subeditor of the New Times, asserts, under the cover of a little knavish mumbling (Fraser's Magazine, No. 6, page 722), that during the time I was Valpyan Editor' of the Sunday Times-about four years-during which time I often wrote the eight or ten leaders which that paper then gave, and continually not less than ten or twelve columns (tantamount in quantity, to this pamphlet every week) of original contributionduring the time, moreover, when so far from not flourishing,' which the 'Rip' and the New Times Subeditor, stammers forth a collusive wish to hint, it nearly doubled its circulation, of which fact, better proofs (L.s.d. proofs) than the attesting affidavits printed in the paper itself, can be readily given, if I am challenged to do so-during a time when every scrap and line of manuscript, proprietary or otherwise, were submitted (and justifiably submitted) to my inspection previous to printing-I say this Ex-Subeditor of the New Times asserts, with an astonishing blindness of confession, only accountable by intoxication, that the above' voluminous Mss.' (and voluminous they must, indeed, be if collected), which, by a law-enforced rule, are deposited in weekly packets, in the hands of the printer, were transferred to, and are now in the hands of another confederate Ex-Subeditor of the Ex-New Timesthat New Times, it being remembered, being an Ultra, the Sunday Times a Radical publication. This is asserted. If true, it would be my duty to-morrow, to subject (notwithstanding the domestic restraining motives referred to) the whole junta, with Mr. Burlington Puff (already legally committed, sly as he is) at their head, to an action for conspiracy. The legal details it would develope would, at all events, furnish an amusing denouement to the last scene of the Montgomery Controversy. But I am at liberty to disbelieve Dr. Magin.

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