novels, that he would read them after the labours of the day, till the wax-lights guttered without his knowing it. I had a secret regard for him on this account, and wished he would not haunt me in a spirit so unlike Tom Jones. I know not what sort of lawyer he was; probably none the worse for imbuing himself with the knowledge of Fielding and Smollett; but he was a bad reasoner, and made half-witted charges. He used those edge-tools of accusation which cut a man's own fingers. He assumed, that we could have no motives for writing but mercenary ones; and he argued, that because Mr. Scott (who had no more regard for Bonaparte than we had) endeavoured to shame down the practice of military flogging by pointing to the disuse of it in the armies of France, he only wanted to subject his native country to invasion. He also had the simplicity to ask, why we did not "speak privately on the subject to some member of Parliament," and get him to notice it in a proper manner, instead of bringing it before the public in a newspaper? We laughed at him; and the event of his accusations enabled us to laugh more.

The charge of being friends of Bonaparte against all who differed with Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Canning was a common, and, for too long a time, a successful trick, with such of the public as did not read the writings of the persons accused. I have

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often been surprised, much later in life, both in relation to this and other charges, at the credulity into which many excellent persons had owned they had been thus beguiled, and at the surprise which they expressed in turn at finding the charges the reverse of true. To the readers of the Examiner, they caused only indignation or merriment.

The last and most formidable prosecution against us remains to be told; but some intermediate circumstances must be related first.

CHAPTER XII.

LITERARY WARFARE.

The Reflector and the writers in it.-Feast of the Poets.-Its attack on Gifford for his attack on Mrs. Robinson.-Character of Gifford and his Writings.-Specimens of the Baviad and Moviad. His appearance at the Roxburgh Sale of Books.Attack on Walter Scott, occasioned by a passage in his edition of Dryden.-Tory Calumny.-Quarrels and recriminations of authors.-The writer's present opinion of Sir Walter.-General offence caused by the Feast of the Poets.-Its inconsiderate treatment of Hayley.-Dinner of the Prince Regent.-Holland House and Lord Holland.-Neutralization of Whig advocacy.— Recollections of Blanco White.

THE Examiner had been established about three years, when my brother projected a quarterly magazine of literature and politics, entitled the Reflector, which I edited. Lamb, Dyer, Barnes, Mitchell, the present Greek Professor Scholefield (all ChristHospital men), together with Dr. Aikin and his family wrote in it; and it was rising in sale every quarter, when it stopped at the close of the fourth number for want of funds. Its termination was not

owing to want of liberality in the payments. But the radical reformers in those days were not sufficiently rich or numerous to support such a publication.

Some of the liveliest effusions of Lamb first appeared in this magazine; and in order that I might retain no influential class for my good wishers, after having angered the stage, dissatisfied the Church, offended the State, not very well pleased the Whigs, and exasperated the Tories, I must needs commence the maturer part of my verse-making with contributing to its pages the Feast of the Poets.

The Feast of the Poets was (perhaps, I may say, is) a jeu-d'esprit suggested by the Session of the Poets of Sir John Suckling. Apollo gives the poets a dinner; and many verse-makers, who have no claim to the title, present themselves, and are rejected.

With this effusion, while thinking of nothing but showing my wit, and reposing under the shadow of my "laurels" (of which I expected a harvest as abundant as my self-esteem), I made almost every living poet and poetaster my enemy, and particularly exasperated those among the Tories. I speak of the shape in which it first appeared, before time and reflection had moderated its judgment. It drew upon my head all the personal hostility which had hitherto been held in a state of suspense by the vaguer daring of the Examiner; and I have reason to

believe that its inconsiderate, and I am bound to confess, in some respects, unwarrantable levity, was the origin of the gravest, and far less warrantable attacks which I afterwards sustained from political antagonists, and which caused the most serious mischief to my fortunes. Let the young satirist take warning; and consider how much self-love he is going to wound, by the indulgence of his own.

Not that I have to apologize to the memory of every one whom I attacked. I am sorry to have had occasion to differ with any of my fellow-creatures, knowing the mistakes to which we are all liable, and the circumstances that help to cause them. But I can only regret it, personally, in proportion to the worth or personal regret on the side of the enemy.

The Quarterly Review, for instance, had lately been set up, and its editor was Gifford, the author of the Baviad and Moviad. I had been invited, nay, pressed by the publisher, to write in the new review; which surprised me, considering its politics and the great difference of my own. I was not aware of the little faith that was held in the politics of any beginner of the world; and I have no doubt, that the invitation had been made at the instance of Gifford himself, of whom, as the dictum of a "man of vigorous learning," and the "first satirist of his time," I had quoted in the Critical Essays the gentle observation, that "all