r.yf .^o^ :^^' ^jf^ji^-f^^K jsrJ' rjKJ' M ^ « J -^-^L '^'iu(r lA i^^^mm§. 7j l^SBfL- " //JA 0£^ '■ ' r f/r -'M^^jr ir* iht<^ yifi^C^^ /^t,<^C^<.^t^c^cxrLt-^ on reconsideration, had more sense than his biographer." You having said, not thirty lines higher, that the plotted murder was perpetrated, that the edition was printed, and having in the preceding page accused the biographer of strange blindness to the most obvious facts of the case, because he asserted 57 \yliat you now assert ; having actually reproached him for not having collated an edition which you now assert never existed at all, because Lyttelton had more sense than his biographer ! Why, Sir, for what, in Heaven's name, do you take your readers ? Do you suppose they are infatuated with the same rage for abuse and misrepresentation as yourself? Did it never occur to you that some one among them might take the trouble, if not to put what you say in one page by the side of what you say in another, at least to compare the lines at the top and bottom of the same page with the other? Can any but the most voluntary of dupes be im- posed upon by such flagrant, such palpable, such everlasting absurdities ? If you do flatter yourself with a hope of imposing upon any but the weakest blockheads by this jumble, in a style trivial, yet almost unintelligible, of self-destructive denials and assertions, with criticisms upon the supposed omis- sion of an e in a name mentioned a century ago, with misstatements, shuffling, and prevarication, I can only apply the words of an old critic, quoted somewhere, I think, by Bentley — " Usque adeo Lectores suos pro stupidis ac bardis habet, quibus quidvis imponere sibi licere secure confidit." You may, indeed, prevent inaccuracy, but it will be as the drunken Helot prevented intoxication. You say, that Akenside could not have derived any support from Lyttelton's interest with the Prince, because " he belonged to an altogether dif- 58 ferent time and class." Here, again, is a wild asser- tion, which the audacity of ignorance, or the most appalling indifference to truth, can alone account for. Akenside was the most ardent of the young patriots of the day. In his indignant epistle to Curio, he traces and describes with uncommon spirit the proceedings of Pulteney, then Lyttel ton's leader against Walpole. Although you are pleased to prove your uncommon qualifications for writing the history of that period by asserting that Lyttel ton abhorred Wyndham's politics, and that Akenside belonged to " an altogether different time and place,'' '* Illi robur et ses triplex," not, indeed, " circa pectus." In page 236, you assert what is absolutely false, in order to accuse the Editor of inaccuracy ; you say, " Lyttelton returns some money offered him by the Prince; the salary, we must suppose, of some office." You may suppose any thing that happens to suit your purpose, but nobody else who can read the endorsement on that letter, and the letter itself, will or can suppose any thing of the sort, as it is quite clear that Lyttelton held no office at that time under the Prince ; and the money was offered on account, as Lyttelton expressly says, of the expense which Lyttelton had incurred by staying in town to look after the Prince's affairs. " Were," says Lyttelton, " my father to object to my staying in town, which I do believe is necessary for your service in this con- juncture, on account of the expense, I would not scruple to remove that objection by accepting such 59 assistance as your goodness would be ready to afford me; but, as long as my father is not uneasy, I beseech your Royal Highness to let me serve you, without being paid for it." The Editor, page 201, quotes an anecdote most un- favourable to his hero. It is, that Lyttelton offered terms through young Selwyn to Walpole. He says, that it is related by the author of an anonymous me- moir. He says, that he disbelieves the story, because no traces are to be discovered of it in the archives at Hag- ley . Next, because Glover, who thirsted for Walpole's blood, " was animated by the most rancorous hatred against Lyttelton,'' and those with whom he acted ; and lastly, that the story is derived from the autho- rity of the Prince of Wales. You begin by saying, that the Editor makes " a little attempt to discredit the story, by calling it anonymous." Any one would suppose you were about to prove that it was not anonymous. " When you say, it is no othei wise anonymous than that the name is not on the title page ;" in other words, than that it is anonymous, and (mark the reasoning) ** Mr. Phillimore admits that the author was Lyttelton's own friend — Glover." Mr. Phillimore having, in the passage, quoted by yourself a few lines above in the same page, ex- pressly stated, that " Glover was animated by the most rancorous hatred against Lyttelton and his party." This, you represent, as admitting that a statement is made by a man's own friend. Such monstrous disregard of truth, — such direct self-con- 60 tradictioii is really almost incredible. Again, is the Memoir the less anonymous, because the author's name is not known ? or even because the author's name was known at the time ? Is the abominable mass of malice, dulness, and bad grammar, which I am now commenting upon, the less anonymous, because every one who reads it knows there is but one person in England capable of writing it ? Let us go on. These are your words : " But, he says, the story rests on the sole authority of Glover. As it was a statement of the Prince of Wales, in con- fidence to Glover, we have it undoubtedly on Glover's sole authority." Then, why carp and cavil at the statement to which you cannot object? " But there is not, we presume, any reason to doubt his vera- city." The Editor has just told you some reasons, viz. that he w as the bitter enemy— (you have changed the words, to be sure, into friend) — of Lyttelton and his adherents. And, as to the Prince, Glover relates that the story was separately con- firmed; but he does not tell us by whom, and the only confirmation of a story so grossly improbable, which we now possess, rests on a note in the last edition of Coxe's Life of Walpole ! avowedly resting on Glover's Memoirs as its sole authority ; this, the Editor has stated at full length, page 202, of w^hich, as usual, you know nothing. Of course, you say, " We have no doubt of the fact." How should you, as it is most improbable, and at variance with all we know of the character of the party concerned ? You next give your reader, who has had so many speci- 61 mens of your literary, an opportunity of estimating your political, morality, — by saying, " we can ima- gine such a treaty without any disgrace to Lyttel- ton." Were the story true, nothing but the most absolute want of principle on Lyttelton's part would account for it; and, nevertheless, you assert that you can imagine such a treaty without any disgrace to Lyttelton. This may be true. Let us proceed. " Mr. Phillimore tells us, with grave absurdity, that in 1741, Lyttelton became acquainted with War- burton, then in the zenith of his power." On this you remark, " What Mr. Phillimore can mean by saying, that a country clergyman, with a very small living, and only then opening his splenilid literary and clerical career, was in the zenith of his power we do not at all understand." What you mean by saying, that Warburton, who had then written the chef d'oeuvre, on which his reputation is built almost exclusively, was then " opening his career," I do very well understand. It is to mis- represent the truth, for the sake of injuring the w^ork you review. To call Warburton at that time in the zenith of his power is a perfectly legitimate expres- sion. He was in the zenith of his reputation, and his faculties were at their meridian height. When poor Swift, as his faculties began to decay, took up the Tale of a Tub, he is said, after readino; the work for a short time, to have flung it down, exclaiming, " Good God, what a mind I had when I wrote that book." Would it not be right to say that Swift, 62 when he wrote the Tale of a Tub, was in the zenith of his power. Yet Swift was then a poor clergyman, with a very small living. Passing from this inef- fectual cavil, which fills three quarters of a page, we come to the next sentence. *' There are half-a- dozen letters from Bolingbroke, but being written late in life, and not affording any insight into the mysteries of his busier days, they are now of little interest.'' As a proof of this, with your usual saga- city, you quote one, which is the most beautiful of its kind in our language, till now unpublished ; and another, which shews that Bolingbroke's idea of a Patriot King was originally composed in a letter to Lyttelton — a literary anecdote, which, as it reveals the history of the most magnificent piece of decla- mation in the language, is not without value in the eyes of any scholar, and which is worth bushels of the useless gossip that it has been the business of your life, in the intervals of anonymous assault on all that is good and eminent, to accumulate. After quoting the beautiful letter to Lyttelton on the death of his wife, another letter of Lord Bolingbroke, written in the same admirable style, immediately follows, now also for the first time published. Here we have another proof of your honesty. The letter ends, " in this temper of mind I wait for my own dissolution, and wish I did not foresee another." You subjoin, with an ostentation of accuracy, " the other was his wife's, who died a year before him." This fact you copied from Mr. Phillimore's book, which 63 you do not so much as mention. Another opportu- nity for a cavil is, literally, that the Editor has printed Voltaire's Letters as they were written, with a J instead of I. This is worthy of your Mon- tagu Johnson's complaint, that we " should soon babble a dialect of France." It is not to shake your opinion — which is not of the slightest value — but to give the reader an idea of your honesty, that I place the two following passages, in contrast with each other. Review, page 229. Memoirs, page 259. Mr. Phillimore is, as usual. In the ** Persian Letters," as unlucky in his criticism. We in all his other works, Lyttel- know not why he should say ton is but an imitator : the that the Persian Letters and idea, the name, and some of the Dialogues were written after details are borrowed from the the French model. — Nor can ** Lettres Persannes" of the we discover what he means by President Montesquieu, saying, that the Dialogues of the Dead are written on an entirely French model, they are no more on the French model than on the Greek. You have a wretched quibble on the expression * the fashion of the day.' '^^ The days," you say, * See how bhnd your malignity is. You, yourself, talk of the Spectator as a work of "Lyttelton's day," page 229 of this 79 " being nearly thirty years asunder." What days do you mean ? The Editor, who writes sense and gram- mar, means the day and year on which the letters were written. Did Montesquieu write nothing besides the " Lettres Persannes?" Every line betrays your ignorance. Do you not know that Adam Smith, and Burke, and Gibbon, at different times took him for their model? Gibbon's expression, somewhere, is, '* how fatal was the imitation of Montesquieu !" The Editor is not more responsible for your blunders, in- accuracy, and bad taste in this article, than he is for the colossal statue of the Duke of Wellington, which was intended to be p'aced over the Hyde Park gates. Page 246, is a series of plagiarisms, varied by a dash of hypocrisy. The letters, which you elsewhere affirm to be worthless, you here allow to be im- portant. In fact, you could not deny it — Chester- field's Letters are most valuable. You say, Mr. Phillimore need not have exa2:s:erated Chesterfield's hope — that the Queen— the great supporter of Wal- pole — might be dead, into an " anxious desire." What purpose can this miserable stuff be intended to answer? Is it not clear that Chesterfield did most anxiously desire that the great stay and support of Review ; and yet you censure the Editor for talking of Montes- quieu's writings as being of the same day with Lyttelton, his contemporary — Lyttelton was not Addison's contemporary ! Can the wish to injure, with or without cause, display itself more strongly ? To compare you with any of the writers lashed in the Dunciad, would be gross flattery. 80 his political enemy might be taken away ; and, if he really thought Walpole was destroying all the best interests of the country, abroad and at home, is there anything very offensive in his wish, or his " anxious desire'' that the impediment to the destruction of so great an evil might be removed ? In page 247, is a still more conclusive proof of your utter indiiference to the plainest notions of literary honesty ; you say, " Cliesterfield, well as he knew the court, w^as mistaken in his prognostica- tion of Walpole's downfall from the death of the Queen." " Horace Walpole states, in a letter to Mann, &c." All this is copied from the Memoirs, and stated as if it were your own. You are, to be sure, admirably qualified to complain of the exaggeration of a " wish" into " an anxious desire." — Who would not dread the rebuke of such a moralist ? Really, Sir, these sallies of yours, when you play the "pede nudo Catonem," and place yourself in the moral chair, atoning, by the exaltation of your theory, for the laxity of your practice, are infinitely comical. They remind me of Harlequin, who, as^ the story goes, distinguished himself as an Archbishop, but was detected by the manner in which he gave the benediction! In page 264, you say, " we have a reverence to the private man." I really cannot con- ceive why — he was not a shameless plagiarist, nor did he from mean or malignant motives make out thirty pages of unjust abuse and depreciation. He seems to have been an honourable, candid, and 81 ingenious person. " For what bad quality," as Benedict says, " do you admire him ?" You admit, forgetting your assertion in page 237, that the Editor '* had produced nothing new," with manifest reluctance, the value of the Letters written by Lord Lyttelton to his brother, which give an account of the interior of the Cabinet, from 1756 to 1765, and which state an important fact, that, till the appear- ance of Lyttelton*s, and the almost contemporary publication of Walpole's Memoirs, was unknown; namely, that Lyttelton, " the fly upon the wheel," as you call him, refused the office of Prime Minister. These Letters, you say, are the most valuable part of the compilation. Now let us see how often you use similar phrases to escape admitting the utility of the work. Page 254, we find an entirely new docu- ment quoted, which, you are pleased to observe, is of some importance to Lyttelton's character. Page 233, you quote from the Memoirs a secret anecdote of . Philip 5th of Spain, w^hich, you say, " we had not," (that, it is true, proves nothing, but which in fact well-informed people had not) "read elsewhere." We have several of Lord Bolingbroke's letters, every line of which is precious to those who, unlike you, can write and understand English, now pub- lished for the first time. In page 246, " the Letters between October, 1737, and June, 1741," you say, " will be thought the most valuable part of Mr. P.'s extracts from the archives at Hagley." Here are two sets of Letters, both of which you call G 82 the most valuable part of the compilation, at an interval, it is true, of about 8 pages. You have not mentioned or referred to a single fact, except that relating to " Rule Britannia," which is not stated by the Editor of Lyttelton's Memoirs. You have transcribed facts, mentioned for the first time in these pages, without any reference to the work from which they are taken. You have plagiarized the remarks of the Editor ; you have borrowed his state- ments; all the illustrations, which his varied and ex- tensive knowledge of history and literature (by which I do not mean Essays by Karkeet, or Beatson's Index), enabled the Editor to bring together, you have taken as your own ; except, to be sure, the me- morable dissertation on parties, which, to do you justice, is exclusively your own. Every single re- mark on history, that does not shock common sense, and is not at direct variance with the most notorious facts, is taken, without any mark of citation, from the pages of the writer whom you, — by systematic and deliberate misrepresentations, by falsifying some passages, by garbling others, by substituting expres- sions, sometimes directly opposite to those which the Editor really used, for those which he did em^ploy, by transposing the dates from one period to another, and by a hundred other as liberal artifices, — have endeavoured to injure and defame. The last three pages are one continued plagiarism : speaking of Lyttelton's expression to his brother, that " he was out of the scramble at his own desire ;" you say, 83 " this we now know was not the fact." How do you know ? because the Editor has told you. All the intrigues and facts mentioned in 260 and the fol- lowing- pages, the proposal of the Duke of Newcastle to include Lyttelton in his administration, the refusal of Lyttelton to accept office apart from Pitt and Temple, the refusal to join Lord Rockingham's ad- ministration, nay, the account of Lord Lyttelton's retreat, and his acquaintance with Mr. Burke, are taken from the Editor. In the spirit so congenial to a nature like yours, you accuse the Editor of having reproduced, without acknowledgment, from the Gentleman's Magazine, Dr. Johnstone the Phy- sician's Letter to Mrs. Montague, the fact being the Editor took it from the Hagley MSS. ; and you wind up this tissue of malignity and prevarication, by as pettifogging an objection, and a misrepresen- tation as gross as any of those, abundant as they are, which disfigure the production that secures you your position among the Zoilus's and Bavius's of former ages. You say that the Editor ends as he began, ** with the misstatement of an important fact. Lord Lyttelton has not bequeathed his title and his cha- racter to his posterity." This implies that the Editor had said, that the posterity, to whom Lord Lyttelton bequeathed his title, still exist. He said no such thing. He said, in the passage which you yourself quote, " he bequeathed to his posterity both the title," &c. " and the more valuable distinction which public opinion had prefixed to it," &c. The union G 2 84 of the words " title'* and " character" is your own, and was introduced, no doubt, in the hope that the confusion so created, might enable this last miserable attempt at fraud to escape detection. You proceed : "The title of Lyttelton was revived in 1794, in the person of his youngest brother, William Lord West- cote, the grandfather of the present peer." This is taken from page 28 of the Memoirs, and you " end as you began" with a dishonest and shameless plagiarism. The Editor says, " VI. William Henry, second heir, who succeeded to the estates on the death of his nephew in 1779, and was created Baron Westcote of Balamore in Ireland, in 1776, and (third) Baron Lyttelton of Frankley, in 1794. He was Governor of South Carolina, and afterwards of Jamaica, the grandfather of the present lord."* Thus I have shewn that the Editor is right, and that the use of the word " posterity" is legitimate. Lord Lyttelton did bequeath the title which now distinguishes his family to his son. The fact which you represent the Editor as having misstated from ignorance, is circumstantially and accurately related by him, and in all probability has, like many others, been borrowed by you, without any acknowledgm^ent, from his work, at the very moment when you were imputing ignorance of it to him as a crime. In order to shew that " the thread of your verbo- sity is *' not" finer than the staple of your argu- ment," that in your instance it cannot be said " Ma- * Lyttelton*s Memoirs, p. 28-9. 85 teriam superabat opus," I select a few flowers of your eloquence and erudition. First, out oi jive Latin quotations I find theybwr following. Page 216. "That would too openly have re- vealed" the "/a^e^ dolus in generalibus ;'* "latens" probably is meant : but for a writer himself to re- veal a " latens dolus in generalibus" of his own, is a felicity of expression peculiar to yourself. 2. Quieta ne movere. 3. Proh stupendum ! 4. *' His death, novas insidias machinans." P. 217. " Where there is no continuous series, but only scattered letters, or small batches from a few poems, each (of the small batches) covering a limited portion of time, and having little relation," &c. ; a small batch covering a limited portion of time, and having little relation ! ! lb. " This opens another of his confusions." P. 222. "Though he had no obligation to them, but indeed the contrary ;" having the contrary of an obligation to another, is a happy turn of phrase also peculiar to yourself. P. 224. " No register kept in that school oi what they call oppidans !" The boys what they call oppidans ! and the men what wear red coats ! are equally refined modes of expression. P. 227. " Lytteltons having addressed a much longer poem, would lead us to a contrary opinion." 8(5 P. 227. " His earlier poems are positively better than his last." Probably, if they are better at all, P. 227 is also remarkable for the most absurd application of a line in Milton's Allegro. "The cy- nosure of * labouring' c^e5," applied to the model of poetical imitators. It is the labour of the head not of the eyes, that enables people to imitate great models. It is only when people form their taste and acquire their knowledge from Indexes, that the labour of the eyes is the principal exertion. P. 228. " Economical prodigality." " This is hot ice." (M. Night's Dream.) P. 228. Letters " may be read with information," — and without it, judging from this article. P. 231. "The Duchess felt no doubt her appro- bation:'' — no doubt, people who approve usually do. P. 231. "Remembering in her will factious ac- tivity by a legacy." P. 231. " Names left unmentioned out of defe- rence to personal feelings :" — here the phrase ends ; no particular person is mentioned. To account for an impersonal feeling would, I suspect, puzzle most metaphysicians. You had heard an individual's per- sonal feelings spoken of, and in your slip-slop Re- viewer's style, you apply the phrase to the species, and make it nonsense. P. 233. " Lyttelton shifted his quarters to Sois- sons, where was then holding the celebrated Congress at which Stanhope," &c. 1 wonder what the Congress was holding ? — its 87 tongue, or its pen ; no wonder you defend the style of George the Third's note ! P. 236. " He soon subsided into a secondary part.'* P. 239. ** An instance worth developing." " Ignorant intricacy ;" it would be quite as good English to talk of an " ignorant apoplexy.'* P. 247. " Lyttelton and Chesterfield had a reci- procal dislike." Barbarous ! P. 246. We are told of " cold compliments" " widening a breach." lb. *' He seems to have given him more sober advice in private, and in October he endeavoured to dissuade him from pressing for an increased allow- ance." What did he to him in November ? lb. "A trait substantiated." P. 250. " Of the same colour is the following extract of a letter." P. 251 . " As the first letter is completed so should the other — to complete the series." P. 251. A person, we are told, "is remembered by a poem, which is itself forgotten !! T To say that a person's throat was cut by a man who was himself buried, would be equally good sense. P. 251. "Solaced himself," this awkward phrase was probably meant as a sneer, which Johnson after- wards softened into " solaced his grief." In English this ought to have been, "this awkward phrase was softened," &;c. &c. ; as the sentence stands, the only 88 meaning is, that a " probable sneer" was softened into " solaced his grief." P. 255. " But Lyttelton being thus interested," &c. " knowing that," &c. *' feeling as he must have done," " ought Ae," &c. " to have defeated," &c. An exquisite specimen of pure English. lb. Conduct " trehly unjustifiable." 1st, " be- cause the office of Cofferer," &c. — 2nd, " that if he"— 3rd, caret!! ! P. 256. " Saying a few words on a political fea- ture." — " Antagonist principles, on which our con- stitution was balanced:" — antagonist stools on which people who try to sit, &c. P. 257. Contains a sentence, as completely an- swering to the idea expressed by the French word Galimatias, as any in our language. " With the French Revolution commenced a new or we may say a revived state of things." Com- menced a new state of things is, 1st. tautology — 2ndly, a most clumsily constructed sentence. The first thing you should learn in composition, is to put the verb in its right place, which, if there be a wrong one to put it in, you never do. " Commenced a revived state of things" is very downright vulgar nonsense. P. 260. *' There is good reason to suspect a re- mark — (of what ?) of having been inaccurately remembered." Except in the Quarterly Review, people talk of suspecting that a person has inaccu- rately remembered a remark. 89 P. 260. ** Lyttelton's vanity was gratified by the approbation, which an early communication of his volumes procured from some of his friends ;" instead of the volumes it would seem it was the '^ early communication' ' which procured the approbation. This might flatter the vanity of a newspaper agent but not of an historian. P. 260. " Here ended Lyttelton's literary life, as his political life seemed to have closed on his removal to the House of Lords — but the latter revived." That is, one did end — and the other did not ; and the particle " as" like " by" and " but," and most of its brethren in these pages, is misplaced. P. 262. *' Coalescing by an inconsistency." * Lyttelton felt severely that he was excluded from the treaty." How can a man feel severely that he is excluded from a treaty ? he may see plainly, and feel strongly — but he acts severely. Let us, however, go on with the sentence — to soothe the severely feel- ing Lyttelton, " Lord Hardwicke writes one of those smooth epistles, on which he was so often em- ployed :" I suppose as a labourer is on a railroad, or a tailor on a coat. By a little insincerity, which (we have it on your authority. Sir,) the "most honourable and candid politicians always indulge in, — Lyttelton tells his brother :" — to tell a brother by an insincerity ! P. 263. Lyttelton found " consolation in the affection in which he was held by a select circle of friends :" I thought this phrase was confined, by 90 universal consent, to those ingenious writers who inform the public that the Duke of D enter- tained " a select circle" of the most distinguished fashionables, &c.* P. 267. You have heard, that a young nobleman has by " consanguinity" " an incitement," and '*a happy distinction to emulate his (Lord Lyttel- ton's) talents :" I hope not, for though you may emulate a person's deeds or virtues — to emulate his talents is impossible — besides, why should any one, supposing it were possible, strive to emulate the talents of a " fly upon a wheel," (page 221) of one *' who could not accomplish an ordinary sum in arithmetic," (page 230) " whom nobody acquainted with the history of the day can imagine to have had any serious share in public business," (221) " who was in all his works an imitator," (page 259) and " whose conduct was (page 254) doubly, trebly unjustifiable," who (page 256) " selfishly, not to say treacherously, raised himself on their (his friends) fall," and who (ibid.) " fared, as. we fear is * In one number of the Quarterly Review, written in the last five years, a panegyric is literally introduced on Mr. Rogers's dinners — the plate and pictures of that amiable and eminent man, and the manner in which he entertains his guests are described in the style of an upper butler. We hope the writer was asked to dinner as a reward. — Surely people maybe forgiven if they turn aside from such trash, and if, like Mr. Phillimore, they do not read our numbers, which Mr. Croker thinks so heinous an oflfence. 91 usual in politics, better than his tergiversation de- served ;" whose (page 256) " official life was in- glorious in its progress, and in point of personal character not above reproach at its conclusion/' With this judicious sentence the review ends. To give any notion, even the faintest, of the abominable style in which, even when the rules of grammar are not grossly violated, it is written,— of the manner in which " hes" and " hims," " whichs" and " whats," are jumbled together, would require extracts which could not be made without injustice to the passages not cited. This I say, in imitation of the great man of whose " little lives" you are the self-ap- pointed champion — that if any one wishes to attain a barbarous jargon, coarse, but not familiar, and trivial, but not intelligible, he should devote his days and nights to the pages of Mr. Croker. Every man does not possess the same talent, — an eloquent writer often is a partial and incorrect his- torian. The study of words is sometimes unfavour- able to the knowledge of things. Again, it often happens, that minute details escape the person who, in the words of the great man, whose name you have profaned so often, " stand upon that elevation of reason which places centuries under our eye, — which obscures little names, and effaces the colour of parties, and to which nothing can ascend but the spirit and moral quality of human actions." But, that the same individual should write a barbarous style, and be ignorant of the most notorious 92 facts, — should be at once grovelling and inaccurate — should, while crawling in the dust, take as hasty and superficial a view, as if he were soaring above the clouds, — should, while making the most inconceiv- able blunders in the detail, prove himself incapable of seizing the spirit of history, — should unite, in an extraordinary degree, the defects of every class of writers, without possessing the merit of any — is an exemplification of human infirmity as humiliating as any which the annals of our literature exhibit. It is, indeed, extraordinary, that the same author who, in the compass of thirty pages, contrives to talk about " quieta ne movere," " his death, novus insidias machinans," " proh stupendum," ** batches covering a limited portion of time," (page 221) **his own thread woven out of other people's materials," " economical prodigality," (228) " the two main in- fluences of Lyttelton's mature life," " substantiating a trait," (246) about a person being remembered by a poem which is itself forgotten, — who calls faction " a combination of private personal interests," — a' definition which makes every mercantile firm a fac- tion, — talks about " a question subsiding into an unanimity," " a distinctively busy character," of " opening main defects," who makes " is" the verb to "scattered letters," (page 217) — should in the same pages, call Sir Robert Walpole a Tory, — deny that George the 3rd was fond of intrigue, — declare that Lyttelton could not be the friend of Wyndham, because Wyndham was a Jacobite, — bless Burke (as 93 Sancho blesses the man who invented sleep !) — as the inventor of parties in England ! — and pronounce Lord Chesterfield a man who preferred reality to appearance, — all this is marvellous enough; but, that such a person, so largely needing the indulgence of others, should be so infatuated, so blind, so mad with vanity, as to assume a tone of arrogance and superiority, which would be intolerable in a writer of the most transcendant merit, or which is the same thing, possessing all the qualities in which you, Mr. Croker, are deficient, really may be considered a curious fact in the history of the species. And now. Sir, I have finished my task, with more delight than I find it easy to express ; for the drudgery of wading through page after page of your composition, of exposing your ignorance, of pointing out your false statements, your endless pla- giarisms, your gross contradictions ; of detecting the wretched quibbles, the constant proofs of malevolence, exhibiting the base attempts to misrepresent, by which almost every line of your review is polluted ; of laying bare the miserable motives by which its writer must have been actuated, surpasses in the loathing it inspires, and the weariness it creates, any thing that my duty, by no means alw^ays an agree- able one, has hitherto compelled me to undertake. — I never supposed that such a task would be instruc- tive — I knew well, that it would be inglorious. Had my object been that of the Roman, who sought " magnis inimicitiis clarescere," you are the very 94 last person it would have entered into my purpose to attack. That your name, and the name I have vindicated, should ever be connected together, is, on the contrary, to me, a cause of mortification and regret ; yet, the motive to which I yielded, was not one of which I have any reason to be ashamed. I wished to rescue the literary merit and moral character of a near relation from unjust censure, and from imputations as gross and sordid as ever were imputed by you, to those whom, for any reason, it suited your purpose to assail ; nor will it, I trust, be thought presumptuous, if I confess the hope sometimes to have crossed my mind, that at the same time I was labouring in some degree for the benefit of society. Low as the standard of literature is among us at present, what hope or prospect is there of its im- provement, if the mercantile spirit, not content with its encroachments in every other region, is to spread its taint, to infect and contaminate the springs whence its health and purity are supposed to flow ;' if satire is to be jobbed, and praise contracted for, and the terms in which a book is spoken of by those who pretend to regulate the taste and judg- ment of their countrymen, are to be decided not by the merits of the work, but by the residence of its publisher. That a system of pufling, I know no other word that equally describes it, fit only for quacks and mountebanks, and of indiscriminate cen- sure, almost equally disgraceful, prevails now among 95 us, no candid person will deny. Few people have contributed to this evilmore largely than yourself. But whatever mischief your panegyric may inflict upon its object, your malevolence is now I trust no longer formidable ; and I may take leave of you in the words with which one of Congreve's wits ad- dresses a petulant and scurrilous traducer of what he had neither heart to feel nor head to compre- hend : " How mortifying it must be to you, to reflect, that no man thinks the worse of another for your abuse." John George Phillimore. Temple, Aug. 7th, 1846. iKORMAN AND SKEEN, PRINTERS, MAIDXN LANE, COVENT OARDBN. .^^>^ ' .^^' y -^^' ^ -^•".-r- :^<^f^' y^ '/. -ir y j^ w '^^^.^r ^^^^^^