'winter's evening.' The value of a man's principles is best estimated by his life. Now, I have never flattered any man-asked a favour of any man -lived upon any man's money-or been the slave of any man. I defy this my secret enemy to say as much. I have been a hard-working man all my life, for many long years on the green hill-side, and for not a few in a brown study. I am better entitled to repeat Smollett's lines than any hack of Constable's. "Thy spirit, Independence! let me share, Lord of the lion heart and eagle eye; Thy steps I follow, with my bosom bare, Nor heed the storm that howls along the sky." With respect to "middling poems," will this critic dare to say that the Queen's Wake is a middling poem? Fye, fye, Mr Jeffrey! to let a creature like this contradict you to your face, on your own dunghill! The hit at my Winter Evening Tales is not a staggering blow. There can be no occasion to sadden your winter evenings, I am thinking; for spite and stupidity are their own punishment-and a more miserable vision cannot be thought of, than a poor thing like you, in the act of writing against "slavish principles," at the order of your tyrannical master, and talking, with a grusome face, of the sadness of honest folks' lives, in the middle of the misery and degradation of your own. "Many of the Jacobite Songs are worthy of a better cause, and indeed, its romantic features were far from being ill adapted to poetry!" Indeed! what a condescending critic! you really speak as if you were some great man. Instead of getting credit now for being a clever fellow, now-for writing in that way-every body is laughing at you for a great ass. You might just as well speak of the sun "being not ill adapted for giving light," and chuckle over the compliment you had paid to that luminary. In page 159, you seem to be laughing at me for using unnecessarily the expression, "celebrated Butler;" and yet, like a great gowk, you yourself speak of" the celebrated Archibald, Earl of Argyle, who fell a victim, in 1685, to the most atrocious and perfidious tyranny that ever cursed any modern nation.' But what is the use of exposing you any farther? Sitting in among the chaps of the Edinburgh Review, you think yourself, no doubt, a big chiel; but you are far from it-and you must confess-or if you do not-all the rest of the world will-that I have taken you out by the cuff of the neck-given you two or three kicks on the only part about you that can speak any ways intelligibly, and then let you go back in a great fluster to your cronies, who will be telling you, peradventure, that you have given the Shepherd a dressing, which you will try to believe in spite of your own aching posteriors. I see you blame me for what you call my coarseness." I do not pretend to over-refinement; but are not you a great blackguard for writing the following sentence: "This is all that Frederick meant; and we rather marvel 'that the partialities of his august spouse, for a nobleman of known Jacobite tendencies, were not rather cited as evidence that the late king took his Jacobitism by descent." Oh man, but you are a coarse tyke to have written such a sentence! The clumsiness of the expression of it is only beat by the baseness of its ineaning. You, ignorantly, and foolishly, and unfeelingly, say of one of my anecdotes of our late king, that nobody durst have published it when he was alive, alluding, in the brutal language of radicality, to that awful affliction with which it had pleased God to visit his old age. You yourself have here dared to utter a base insinuation, which could only have been conceived in the heart of one of the Illegitimate School, and which, if other proof were wanting, shews that you are, if not in birth, certainly in breeding, a bastard Scotsman. But the truth is that I am weary of gauging such an empty vessel. I am weary of the subject, sir-and under correction I am very weary of you.— I wish I knew, for certain, who you are, that I might tickle you up in a manner more satisfactory to me and more disagreeable to yourself-but since your name has been kept so quiet, I have nothing to say to it, for I am the last person in the world that would wish to throw out unwarranted and uncalled-for obloquy against any character, however despicable. Your cronies will no doubt tell you that I am in a great passion, and that you have given me a dressing. But I care no more about you than about a cross-bred colley that keeps yowling on a bit knowe by the road-side at folk going by to the kirk-till some one throws two or three chuckey-stones at him that make him hide among the heather, till he comes stealing out again, perhaps, by-and-by, and impotently gnaws the very granite that gored his hurdies. I hope my good friend, Mr Jeffrey, will take in good part all I have said about himself. There is no man I would more wish to think kindly of, and I do think kindly of him; but as for many of his coadjutors, and in particular yourself, I shall be contented with merely subscribing myself yours, with disgust, JAMES HOGG. Altrive Lake, October 9th, 1820. [The above letter was enclosed in the following one to us; and James has quitted himself in such a Sampson-like style, that, as polite members of Parliament say to each other, we really cannot think of weakening the effect of his powerful eloquence by any weak observations of our own. C. N.] MY DEAR SIR,-Having been detain ed much longer than I expected at my good-father's in Dumfriesshire, it was not till yesterday evening, that, on coming home, I had an opportunity of perusing the Edinburgh Review you were so kind as to send me some days ago. I am sorry you have not been able to give me a notion who this poor creature is that has been flinging his dirt upon me. Do you not think it is very likely to be Macvey? If you find out that it is he, don't publish the enclosed, but send me word, and I will give him, by return of the carrier, what he will cast, as long as his name is not Napier. As for the Scotsman crew, if you think it is any of them, say nothing about it, for I am of the opinion of Dryden, and James Ballantyne, that "some creatures cannot insult a man.' The fellow, whoever he is, is a mere dunce. And, after all, between ourselves, "Donald Macgillavry," which he has selected as the best specimen of the true old Jacobite Song," and as remarkable above its fellows-" for sly characteristic Scotch humour," is no other than a trifle of my own, which I put in to fill up a page-though not, I confess, by way of Balaam. 66 I have looked over the bundle of Reviews, &c. you have been so kind as to send me, but really I have found little to interest me so you may send them direct to your scientific editor in future. The best of the set is evidently the British Critic, and the worst Baldwin's Magazine. It is indeed Balaam, and nothing but Balaam. There are some excellent remarks on the Abbot, however, in the Monthly Review-particularly that about the dialogue of Woodcock. There can be no doubt, there is too much, by half, about the Eyasses and their washed meat. As for the story of the Lady in Canada, mentioned in Gould and Northhouse, it quite staggers me. Do you believe it I am quite at a stand what to VOL. VIII. think, and cannot see my way through the doings of this world now-a-days. Why don't you send me Barry Cornwall's last volume. They tell me that is not the lad's real name-after all, the extracts are very bonny. I think, however, that his first volume will still bear the bell. If quite convenient, I would also be much obliged by a sight of any of the new productions of the Cockneys-particularly Johnny Keats, who, as Aitken writes me, is really a sweet-tempered inoffensive young creature, and has a real genius for poetry, only just like to be ruined altogether, I suppose, by having forgathered, at that early and inexpe rienced period of life, with such a set of conceited reprobates. What is become of my Highlanders? Am I never to hear more of them? I am sure they might go in at least as Balaam. What a capital thing that Hora Scandica is, in your last Number. Oh! these bantam cocks of Cockaigne, as they say Harry Brougham calls them, will never forgive you. That Paddy Rourke poem also is capital. Why don't you give us more of it? Grieve and I were like to die at one bit of it. By the way, he sends his best compliments to Mr North, and hopes he will give us a sight of him before the burning be clean over. It is true he cannot join in that sport, but otherwise he is well, and in good heart; and when Christopher and he get together, there is no chink in their conversation for any body else just to slip in a single word. What is become of Odoherty? I don't think I see his pen in Number XLII. which is a scandalous omission but, perhaps, you have taken to keeping his articles in the drawer as well as mine. This is what we poor contributors must just lay our account with but it is a sad shame on your part. We were not home in time for the fair at Thirlestane-but from all accounts it succeeded marvellously-Your commission about the kipper and mutton K hams shall be carefully looked to.- Altrive, October 9th. one of our old afternoons in Gabriel's Road! I must certainly take the road one of these days; but Clavers is the best grew in Yarrow, and I can scarcely leave the hares neither. AUTHENTICITY OF HORE SCANDICE. DEAR CHRISTOPHER, I BELIEVE it is allowed, on all hands, that Blackwood's Magazine is the very first publication of the kind,* and this universal acquiescence in its merit spares me the trouble of writing, and you the indelicacy of inserting, any detailed argument on the subject. Among its claims on public favour, the papers on Northern Literature, the Hore Germanice, Danicæ, &c. are pre-eminently entitled to distinction. The fidelity of translation, the beauty of poetry, the accuracy of criticism, that are manifest in every page of these admirable papers, have been attended with universal applause -but as you might have some reluctance to print my panegyrics,† were I to go any farther with them, I shall not express the admiration I feel for these articles in any stronger terms. Of these northern Hora, the most singular however are the Horæ Scandice, which are of a species rather differing in manner and execution from the others. The incredulous were even breathing doubts as to their authenticity-and I heard certain murmurers insinuating that the name Horæ Humbuggicæ, or some such title, would have been better fitted to the first paper of this series,-I mean, that communicated by the Rev. Doctor Chiel, which gave a notice of Maga, Stormboyurs Trollkana Skiækia," i. e. Maga the lewd witch of Stormboje. I never inclined my ear to such people, being always contented to take whatever is given to me sine grano salis, and I was very much pleased to see the series revive in your last Number, sanctioned by the mighty names of Adam Oehlenschlæger and that other gentleman. Surely this, thought I, is of itself sufficient warrant for the authenticity of the First Number; if the Second be authentic, as nobody can doubt, is not the First also? I was NO. I. pleased with my reasoning, and so I finished my second bottle in tranquillity. There is, however, an opacity of intellect in some people, that makes them quite blind to the light of reason. A thick drop-serene has quench-: ed, or a dim suffusion veiled their intellectual orbs; and they, perhaps, if they think at all, may still continue to be sceptical. But I am happy to find a Vir Doctissimus et Clarissimus, a man, cui nemo facile superbius respondeat, (to use the phrase of the learned Godofredus Hermannus, concerning the most doctriniacal Seidlerus), so convinced of the perfect authenticity of the First Number of the Hora Scandicæ, so thoroughly satisfied with its literary and rhetorical merits, as to quote it in a grave and learned work, as a poem illustrative of the Greek tragedians-the book of Jobthe Epistle to the Colossians-and Paradise Lost. For hear a most learned gentleman, whom, from his peculiar and liberal style of scissars-handling, I humbly take to be that prince of scissars-men, E.H. Barker, editor of Thes.§ dissertating in the Classical Journal. "The following are instances," (quoth he)," from Scripture, of a species of expression frequent among the Greek tragedians (valor Пugi.") Eurip. Phon. "A fire not blown shall consume P: 613. "The mighty shall be him," Job xx. 26. taken away without hand," Job xxxiv. 20. "In whom also you are circumcised, with the circumcision made without hands," Col. ii. 11. Thus also," a temple made without hands." So Milton "To blood unshed the rivers will be turned," P. L. xij. 176. Miscellanea Classica, No 5. art. LVII. Classical Journal, No xxxvj. p. 240. After this three quarters of a year elapsed, without any more lucubrations on this topic, but the matter kept nestling in his head, and at last a parallel passage to the above luckily Our readers will find this idea of our Correspondent amply illustrated in our article entitled an Hour's Tete-a-Tete with the Public; but, we confess, we cannot see the indelicacy he alludes to.-C. N. Not any.-C. N. § A neat and commodious abbreviation of Stephani Thesaurus, learned editor. No XI. p. 570. much used by the occurred, which he hastened to communicate in the following words: “In the fifth number of Miscellanea Classica, (Class. J. No XXXVI. p. 240. art. LVII,) were quoted some instances from Scripture, of a kind of expression frequent in the lyrical parts of the Greek tragedians. The author lately met with a translution of an old Scandinavian song, in which the feasting on the body of a slain enemy, is called evidently in the same style. "A banquet, unseemly, Of flesh. your The Miscel. Class. No 6. Class. Jour. XXXIX. p. 8. You may, perhaps, ask how 66 an unseemly banquet of flesh" is a similar expression to "a temple made without hands," but hold in surprise until you hear him out. printers of the classical Journal (Oh be his type, as lead to lead, Thrown at each dull misprinter's head! An author's malison is said.") had abominably docked and curtailed his quotation from the venerable poem of Maga, which you, by looking back to Vol. II. p. 573. of the work over which you so worthily preside, will perceive to be the old Scandinavian song he was quoting. But, at last, after another quarter of a year it makes its appearance, in full splendour, among the errata noticed in Classical Journal, No XL. p. 351. where he bids us, in p. 8, three lines from bottom, read, "A banquet unseemly Of flesh without fire." The matter, after a year's discussion, is fixed here. So you see, Mr North, that raw meat (which I submit is the meaning of " flesh without fire,") is EVIDENTLY an expression in the same style as the angaier Hugì of Euripides, or the "blood unshed" of Milton. Well has it been remarked, that nothing is too hot or too heavy for the gatherer of parallel passages. I recommend the next editor of Milton to give this discovery a place in his notes; it will be as germane to the matter as nine-tenths of the annotations of Newton, or Richardson, or Thyer, or ceterorum de genere hoc. You are glad, of course, to see your old acquaintance, Maga, in such good company; but I am grieved to say, it is not quoted, in the Classical Journal, with the accuracy that might be ex pected, the words being-but I shall We have slain by our prowess, And eat in our ire, A banquet uncleanly, (not unseemly) We have slain, we have eat." With the abatement of this trivial blunder, the perspicacity of the critic is undeniable. So well chosen, so apt, so similar, so authentic a parallel passage, was hardly to be found in the whole range of literature; and I am sure he would confer a high obligation translate the whole poem from the on the reading public, were he to Icelandic, giving us at the same time notes and illustrative passages of his own. The metrical part of the original might be arranged by Mr G. Burges, who would easily reduce his verses to strophe and antistrophe, by the simple and natural process he has inflicted on Euripides, Aristophanes, and other unoffending Grecians-a process which is no more than cutting the verses according to a certain pattern, and then thrusting out all refractory words and sentences that will not agree, and admitting others which, being his own making, will of course be more docile for their creator. It is a pleasant plan, as it gives us plays nearly as good as new, which we might head with the title of ΒΟΥΡΤΕΣΙΟΥ ΤΡΑΓΩΔΙΑΙ ΟΙ KмNAIAI, omitting the names of the antiquated Grecians. Mr Constable, I am sure, would gladly print the translation of Maga, and some gentleman about the Register-office might begot conscientiously to correct the press. Having thus adduced so weighty a testimony in favour of the Hora Scandice, No. I. I presume I have struck scepticism dumb. Indeed I fear that any thing I could say farther would only weaken my argument. I conclude, therefore, by simply, yet triumphantly asking, Whether the Hore Scandice would be brought forward to illustrate all at once, the Old and New Testaments, Euripides, and Milton, by so grave an authority, if it were a humbug? I remain, dear Sir, yours sincerely, A CONSTANT READER. London, October 2, 1820. Marmion, a poem, by Sir Walter Scott, Bart. + What this flesh was is not in my province to inquire, but I believe it is much the same as that which gives the name to Mr Lamb's unfortunate hero, in his unfortunate arce, Mr H. viz. Hogs-flesh. AN HOUR'S TETE-A-TETE WITH THE PUBLIC. Table of Contents. ALLUSION to the Chaldee Manuscript-Distinction between the world and the public-Quotation from Milton-A Fever among our Subscribers— Respectable sale of our first six Numbers-Blessed effects of the ChaldeeSecession and return of two eminent subscribers-Progress from our 7th to 24th Number-Forced to chastise the Young Man of the West and others— Mysterious allusion to our Irish Correspondent-Parallel between ourselves and Othello, The public and Desdemona-The sale of our 40th and subsequent Numbers, stated at somewhere below 17,000-Comparative statement of other periodicals-Resolution formed and expressed by us of keeping down our sale to 17,000-Prospectus of a map of sale-Illustration from Mr Wordsworth-Our French affairs-Editor elected member of the National Institute, on the recommendation of Monsieur Biot-Absurd behaviour of Benjamin Constant-Slight allusion to Professor Leslie and Death in the Pot-Anecdote of nine young English gentlemen from St Omer's -Our Sale in Italy-Nothing else read in Rome-Good thing said by a Devonshire gentleman-Compliment to Mrs Maria Grahame-Many copies taken possession of by robbers near Naples-Our effect on the German Universities-Notices of German translations of our Work-Much talked of and read in Hanover, Hesse, and Holland-Melancholy picture of the want of literature in Spain-State of Lisbon-Outline of our English sale-Regret expressed for the sluggishness of John Scott-Mr Murray no astronomer-We erase his name from our title-page-Nothing else read in London-Blackwood occasionally laid aside during the Queen's trial-View of the State of Society at Oxford-Extremely popular at Cambridge-Our effect on the manufacturing and commercial prosperity of Great BritainMore read in Scotland than the Edinburgh Review-At one time considerably hated in Edinburgh-Now beloved and respected-Anecdotes illustrative of our popularity there-Description of Glasgow Coffee-room on the 21st of the month-Scene with one of the Banditti and six under-writers-Full and particular account of our sufferings under the unparalleled hospitality of the people of the West, including a picture of one day's meals, i. e. breakfast near the Gorbals-Ditto in Millar Street-Lunch in George's-square-The Major's cold round-The Colonel's hotch-potch-Punch with the professors -Supper, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c.-Grand dinner given to us in the Abercorn Arms, Paisley-Mr Crichton's shop window and the brown duffles-Increasing sale and transportation of radicals-Progress of literature in PortGlasgow-Lady, unknown of that town, faithfully though hopelessly attached to the editor-Incomprehensible state of the public feeling at GreenockTransition to the south of Scotland-Character of the old Scots Magazine -David Bryden-Selkirk and Hawick Farmers' Club-Diversity of opinion respecting us in Hogg and Laidlaw-Puzzling tailor at Yarrow-FordTheory of his practice-We are made burgesses of Peebles-We enter the Highlands-Circumambient of Loch Awe-Co-operate with Mr Brown of Biggar and Mr Legh Richmond in civilizing that mountainous countryDiscovery of a university at Aberdeen-The kingdom of Fife compared to that of Dahomey-The Magazine afloat, or a view of our maritime power -Blackwood in a balloon-Singular and successful experiment on the specific gravity of Baldwin-We go down in a diving-bell with a bishop and some young ladies-Register of our Irish sale purloined by OdohertyAnnual profits found by a long and intricate calculation to be about £11,000 per annum-We make large purchases of stock-Feeble attempt |