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REPLY

TO

'FRASER'S' AND 'THE MONTHLY' MAGAZINES.

SUPPLEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION.

SEVERAL periodical works have done me the favor to commend the preceding effort to reform the judgmentseat of criticism, and subject the opinions of modern critics to the restraints of critical law. But two magazines-Fraser's and the Monthly-have preferred to assail me and the temperate argument I have thought myself at liberty to plead at the bar of the public, with much crapulous invective and obstreperous personality. When I say two magazines, I mean two employés of those magazines, who, as I am well informed, are Dr. Magin and the Rev. George Croly. They, it seems, are both pleased to consider themselves inculpated by my pamphlet; the first as the founder of that new school of critical blackguardism therein parodied and exposed, (p. 56); and the last in his double character of (religious) poet and critic-a delusive union constituting part of the modern art of puffing, also exposed (page 150). Fully convinced that public plain sense is not so easily browbeaten out of its calm opinion by mere noisy balderdash, as these persons suppose, I have not thought it requisite to disturb my tranquillity by hurrying my reply. If these two individuals are willing, in answer

to the temperate tone studiously preserved in my publication, to exchange the language of educated gentlemen for that of Billinsgate, I am not anxious to degrade a victorious argument by losing my equanimity so far as to follow their example. Besides, it would be an unequal combat. My inexperience in literary blackguardism would not be a match for their proficiency. Setting aside their scurrilities, it is indeed a sufficiently nauseous task, in order to reply to their arguments, to be obliged to soil my hands by fishing them out of the filth in which they have revelled in immersing them. If I am compelled therefore to exhibit feelings of contemptuous nausea in unwillingly coming into contact with my self-begrimed and unsavoury assailants, they only are to blame. Dr. Magin, with the characteristic pedantry of a small pedagogue, finds nothing to object to but the alleged inaccuracy of my Latin quotations, and founds his charge of false Latinity on an investigation of my printer's slip of errata. Is not this one of those deviations from the right line, doctor, with which you are familiar? The doctor has, indeed, added one line to these Errata; but as he was probably under the influence of that species of second sight vulgarly ycleped seeing double,' the additional line is excusable; yet, alas, the shot,' as it is in all such cases, is wasted. A pedant's only idea of crime in argument is false Latin: and therefore the doctor's pedantry did not see the real fault-the number of the Latin quotations. To such a charge I should have bowed; but that again would not have suited the doctor's Greek faith, since the objection would have drawn attention to the very unusual circumstance that the microscopic eye of malicious and

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practised pedantry, searching word by word a pamphlet of 164 pages, and that, too much crowded with Latin quotations*, and even examining the printer's errata, could detect but one error. Yes, doctor, but one (e for is in imbelle). This trivial error of the press would bring no printer, nor printer's reader, into disrepute. What are this scholastic word-catcher's' other discoveries, skilled as he is in rectifying commas and points?' I should deem it sin to rob him of his mite.' The common law phrasequo animo' (which the worthy doctor pleases to think I could have written quo animus,' although 'quo animo' is used before at page 123 of the pamphlet) is corrected in all but some dozen copies of the first impression on one of which the doctor pounced. I can fancy I see him unshaven, unbraced, ungartered, hurry, hiccupping, stumbling, and stuttering to the bibliopole, the sallow frouzyness of his beer-muddled visage becoming yellower with bilious joy as he carried off the prize. Phrenitis and phrenesis are equally correct. Capra, and other lapses which the doctor has not ventured to touch, are purposely (as he must know) inserted in the prophetic ridicule of Dr. Magin's usual blackguard style of criticism (page 56); and I must do him the

*They are seventy-one, doctor. Can you produce any other pamphlet, or even leading article or speech (e. g.: Sir C. Wetherell's, with its single quotation five times corrected, in and out of St. Stephen's, and not correct yet) exhibiting such a proof of proportionate accuracy in Latinity? I think not. I have now furnished you a few more quotations to try conclusions on. Of course, my Latin authorities are stolen from the last English grammar'-(Fraser's No. 6., p. 674) which, as the bull shows the doctor never looked into one, and as he is not familiar with English (for to call the' chaffing' slang of St. Giles's, used by beggars, thieves and gypsies, English, would be a libel)-he would lose nothing by studying. Mr. Lindley Murray, whom I beg to introduce, would be a profitable acquaintance to him, as well as to his friend the obstreperous Angel of the World,' who often breaks Priscian's head, in the Irish fashion,' for love.'

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justice to say that he has fully and laboriously sinned up to all the defects of the mock example. He may justly snap his finger at the Greek humbug Longinus.' My mode of writing up in English characters, which our Irish Caleb Quotem pronounces Valpyan and cockneyfied,' the doctor must know has good and learned warrant. (See Bryant on the derivation of purus, bury; see also duo, mus, duple, cube, Suria, Sulla, lacrumæ, clupeus, lutra, &c. The Germans always pronounce the Greek y as u.) As to the doctor's interpretation of communis sensus,' which, according to him, implies tact, I retain the opinion I expressed, though previously aware of Gifford's authority. Dr. Magin is, indeed, the last person whose estimate of common sense I should be willing to take. But what has the besotted pedantry of the doctor's entire article to do with a pamphlet inquiring into the laws of criticism, the existence of a critical standard, now in utter abeyance, and the poetical grade, according to those laws and standard, of Robert Montgomery? Against this inquiry, argumentative process, and estimate, the doctor tacitly admits that he cannot find one word to say. Supposing I were as bad a Latinist as the doctor (having no other notion of literary offence) pleases to wish that it should be believed! What then? The erudite simpleton is quite welcome to his little victory over the printer's error of e for is: I will readily, if it will please the doctor, shift it from the printer's shoulders to my own;

His whole debate

Disputes of me or te, or aut, or at;
To sound or sink in cano, o, or a,
Or give up Cicero to C or K-

will be considered of less consequence in good society than amidst the stuttering compotations of the Pig

and Whistle' and the birch-flourishing honours of Irish hedge-schools. I readily admit the worthy doctor's superiority in deciding on the gender of ictus. He has probably had reason during some of his crapulous exploits at the said Pig and Whistle' to feel, without under-standing, by tact'-(perhaps I should say, con-tact, doctor?) that a knockdown blow is masculine; more especially when the pummelled person remains neuter. The doctor may say with 'cudgelled Roper' in the Dunciad:

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And oh! he cried, what street, what lane but knows,
Our thumpings, pumpings, blankettings, and blows;
In every oyster-shop,' our works are seen,
And the fresh vomit runs for ever green.

Physician, physic yourself, is a good adage. Would it not have been wiser, doctor, before you virtually admitted the rottenness of your cause, by concocting a criticism out of a printer's slip of errata, to have looked into the lapses of your own magazine, which contains no more pages than my pamphlet. In the number just published, which dishonours me by the mitigated personality of its attack, we have at page 90, (Fraser's Magazine*, No. 7.)

Timeo Danaos dona ferentes.

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Would it not have been as well, doctor, to have introduced et after Danaos? Your own cacolology' wants curing, Dr. Pangloss! Respue quod non es. But what will the public say, most erudite and illustrious doctor, when told that within a few leaves of your

I purposely spared this abusive magazine in the first instance, as Mr. Fraser now probably knows, for domestic reasons-reasons which have hitherto alone restrained me from dragging some of the Literary conspiracy here brought, for its Literary delinquencies, to the bar of public opinion,-before a legal tribunal. It was hardly requisite for some of these 'gentlemen' with laborious and supererogatory folly, to furnish me with new proofs and new legal confirmations of their pertinacious, malignant, and punishable collusion.

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