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the lowest state of poverty and public estimation, or in the highest prosperity; but his place is between the two extremes, preponderating towards the latter.

Many of the citizens of New York are ignorant of his residence amongst them, so little has the fame of this giant leader of British mobs befriended him in America, and those who do know him speak of his political character with the most sarcastic contempt.

The National Intelligencer, the best written paper in the United States, has done more to bring Cobbett into notice by its censures than even all the abuse he has lavished on the country to which he is now indebted for an asylum. We should have thought, (says the editor), that a silent refuge amongst our woods and forests would have been gratefully acknowledged by a peaceable demeanour and becoming humility in this unfortunate wanderer, instead of which we find 'The Porcupine' issuing from his retreat, and again shooting his quills dipt in the bitterest gall into the very bosoms which have sheltered him; but alas, now they fall harmless, destitute of point; they show the will without the power to wound, and give us an opportunity of shewing our magnanimity in bearing with mute contempt the puny efforts of his inflammable hostility."

Cobbett made a proposal directly to the President for establishing a govern. ment paper, or Register at Washington, and one in every state, over all which he wished to preside as censor. He received a reply certainly, but one which must have been mortifying to his feelings as a man and a writer. "The Republic possesses native talent of her own, and has no occasion for the aid of a foreign pen; besides the government and the people are so identified that one paper serves alike for both." Thus terminated Mr. Cobbett's scheme of becoming Director of a Republican press, for which I was confidently told he had packed up his materials in expectation of an immediate summons court. There are many writers of his level in America, vulgar and persevering; while in England his vulgarity rendered him singular, and he for a time became an object of public attention. In the American prints vulgarity is so common that it ceases to astonish the most common mind.

to

A meeting was called by Cobbett in New York, before whom he laid proposals for printing a Register weekly by

[Aug. 1,

subscription: yet no person of great respectability attended it: and not more than forty put down their names, at the head of whom was Mr. Wm. Bardin, his landlord, an Irish refugee, well known in Dublin during Emmett's attempt at rebellion in 1804. The walls were placarded, but not one paper in New York would insert his advertisement, of which he complains most loudly, declaring he neither would publish nor give a reason for declining, except in private, to each subscriber. In point of fact the reason was, no one would advance the subscription money, and he was perfectly sure the sale would not pay the expense of printing. Periodical works have not that extensive sale in America they have with us; and in a room containing forty or fifty people there will be but one paper, which he who first touches must read aloud for the benefit of the company. There are, however, no lack of what the Spectator calls "coffeehouse politicians," proud of exhibiting as oracles on these occasions, and every room has a reader. I should think Cobbett, from his figure, his

“Throat of brass and adamantine lungs"

well qualified for this office, though his hearers would assuredly be of the lowest and most despicable class in society. What were his readers latterly in England-the same, and in his opinion we know

"Twere better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.”

The National Intelligencer admitted a philippic of his into its columns, merely for the purpose of replying to it. Cobbett's letter was a tissue of falsehoods as to the land he had left, and praises of America, flattering the atheists by gross abuse of Lord Sidmouth; but the bait would not take. I regret much having no copy of the reply, which was a masterly one, and completely silenced Cobbett, who heard unmoved the calls of other journalists upon him for retaliation. He rents a small house, near the town, of 2 stories, to which are attached stables, out-houses, and about ten acres of land in grass: he keeps cows, a horse, and a poney, no vehicle of any kind but a cart, and is much occupied in his garden; he walks generally twice a week into town, one day to the library and the next to the club in Third-street. This club consists of (perhaps) one hundred members, Irish and Scotch emigrants: the name of the chairman is Dennis Callaghan, a man of independent fortune;

1818.]

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The Quarterly Reviewers and Mr. Leigh Hunt.

and the object of the meeting is to smoke,
drink, and discuss politics. I did not
hear that Cobbett had gained any ascen-
dancy over the minds of the members,
though he is celebrated as the longest
and loudest orator on the list. The
worthy Mr. Randolph, an excellent
orator, was in the habit of occasionally
mingling in this company, but has be-
come a seceder. Mr. Randolph ob-
served to a friend of mine, " I had heard
much of Cobbett, and never was more
disappointed when I came to know the
man. Sir, his effrontery is quite dis-
gusting; and what you call his oratory,
nothing more than talking very ill." Ad-
ded to this Crownershield,' who shone
so conspicuously on the Non-Intercourse
Act, and whom Cobbett had flattered in
the Register, said publicly on Change,
'the fellow's merit consists in telling lies,
but he has not sufficient delicacy to gloss
them over so as to become palatable.'
I believe these are the general opinions
of all the well-informed in New York as
to our mighty Cobbett, and sorry am I
to say that his moral reputation is con-
sidered pretty much on a level with his
literary one. There can be no doubt
but he heartily repents of his emigration,
and wishes himself here again in the
midst of all those miseries he says he
fled from.

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The misery of being treated with indifference, contempt and neglect, even by the mob, he never experienced before; and to one of his arrogant and assuming nature these must be perpetual

thorns in his side.

He sometimes gives dinners to his club-friends on the lawn before his door, or at a tavern in town, and lives very respectably in point of expenditure. The tales of his poverty are all untrue, but the rank he holds as a literary and political character cannot be estimated at too low a rate. Cobbett ought to have foreseen the reception he has met with; as he had the example before him of a great, and in some respects, a good man.

I was told Mr. Randolph quitted the club in consequence of Cobbett being permitted to disturb the company with his long harangues. "Tis true that when Mr. R. last visited New York he passed Cobbett without noticing him. Mr. Crownershield told him once," that if he could only talk of himself he had better reserve his eloquence for his family, and let others speak who understood the subject which they had met to consider."

11

The late Dr. Priestly, who in a fit of
spleen at a whole nation because he had
suffered from a mob, became a deter-
mined citizen of America; and notwith-
standing a reputation in England nearly
equal to that of Franklin preceded his ar-
rival in the States, where he wrote and
published, with distinguished ability, he
was scarcely noticed by those whom he
expected to idolize him, and he died at
last expressing regret at quitting a home
where his talents were duly appreciated.
Such will not be the fate of Cobbett, as
he makes no secret of his resolution
to return and sleep in peace in the
land of his fathers; though if there
are any obstacles to his return 'tis to be
hoped they will never be removed. I
bear no personal enmity to the man but
abhor his principles, or rather his total
want of principle, which renders him
almost unworthy of this notice, did not
common curiosity justify inquiry for the
sake of instruction, into the punishments
at length visiting this restless and con-
temptible being.
J. M.

I am, &c.

THE QUARTERLY REVIEWERS AND MR.
LEIGH HUNT.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE EXAMINER.
SIR,

A valuable and learned friend of mine has frequently observed of the journal which you have long conducted with so much discredit to yourself and mischief to the public, that it is impossible to peruse the political portion of it without casting away the paper, disgusted with nant at the pernicious principles which your over-weening arrogance, and indigit propagates; and that he has, for that reason, long abstained from reading any of those nonsensical lucubrations. In his opinion I concur so fully, that, unless I were perfectly à loisir, I would not give myself the trouble of rising from my chair to reach it, if it lay before me. Being, however, on Sunday last, at a coffee-house where I usually dine, and feeling that weariness and depression of spirits which is sometimes relieved not more by a glass of good wine than by a laugh at something absurd and preposterous, I called for the Examiner; for it suggested itself to me that I should probably find something in which your egregious and superabundant vanity might so far preponderate over your perverseness and profligacy, that the feelings excited might be those of merri

12

The Quarterly Reviewers and Mr. Leigh Hunt.

ment and contempt rather than of illhumour and anger. I was not disappointed; for the first article which challenged my attention was a very acrimonious, but harmless, attempt to be severe upon the Editor of the Quarterly Review. I found several things therein which were extremely amusing; but I was particularly entertained with the idea thrown out that the editor of the Quarterly Review is jealous of the pretensions of the editor of the Examiner; and that the writer, under whose censure you are wincing and crying out so piteously, is a dull, stupid man. But all this, when coming from you, sir, is too common to be dwelt upon.

Of those animadversions of the Quarterly Reviewer, which have caused in you such an extreme overflowing and expectoration of bile, I have no hesitation whatever in saying that they are not more creditable to the talents of their writer (whether they are or are not the production of Mr. Gifford) than honourable to his feelings as a man. As a critic, he has performed no small service to the cause of literature, even by his too lenient reprehension of the childish babblings, the uncouth doggerel, and the insane extravagancies which you dignify with the appellation of poetry. As a member of society, he has promoted its best interests, even by the very gentle exposure which he has made of the pernicious tendency of the doctrines which you are incessantly inculcating, and by reprobating (certainly not with great severity) the unnatural rancour, the monstrous ingratitude, and the horrid impiety of those whom you are so proud to denominate your friends: by shewing, in short, that your writings are alike calculated to vitiate good taste and to corrupt good principles.

You complain of the treatment which you have received from the Quarterly Review. Pray, sir, if you have ever condescended to peruse the letters of Mrs. Carter, do you remember the warmth of expression in which that learned and exemplary lady condemned the infamous example of mis-applied talents which Voltaire and his infidel brethren held out to the world? She says: "If I happened to be accidentally in a room with Voltaire, I do not believe I should think it necessary to run out screaming fire and murder; but, certainly, from every society in which I had a casting vote, such a wretch would be infallibly excluded." I am not quite sure but that I should do you some wrong, were I to

[Aug. 1,

accuse you of labouring with the same malignant zeal as that writer to sap the foundations of christianity, and of employing what abilities you do possess to promulgate such obscene blasphemies and horrible impieties as those which were diffused by him and his associates. This would, perhaps, be an unwarrantable judgment. But I do not know if it might not be made a question, whether, when we consider the bitter and envenomed attacks which it has sustained from your pen, we may not fairly conclude, that if it have not found in you quite so deadly an adversary-if you have not proceeded to such daring lengths-that forbearance is to be ascribed to the reluctant respect which you have been compelled to make to the national character of the British people, who have not yet acquired a diseased appetite for the impurities which generated such a pestilence in France. Consequently, I do not know that I should feel inclined to inflict upon you a punishment so ignominious as that which Mrs. Carter thought due to the destructive industry of Voltaire. But I think it is not saying too much to declare that the sentence which the Quarterly Reviewers have recorded against you, if weighed against the magnitude of your offences, will be found to be mild and merciful in the extreme. "A wicked writer," Mrs. Carter well observes," is a much worse character than even a wicked man. The temporary example of the latter may murder a few individuals, but the other poisons a river, and diffuses infection through whole kingdoms: the current of time rolls it to successive generations, and there can be no guessing when the force of the venom will be spent." But your self-love and self-admiration, fed, even to a plethora, by the fulsome flattery of partial and undiscerning friends, which protrude themselves in every page of your flimsy compositions, are very naturally inflamed with rage at the Quarterly Review, although it has administered so gentle and moderate a corrective to the fever of your intoxication.

Your dereliction of principle and your devotedness to a disgraced and defeated faction have been frequently visited with a

wholesome chastisement, much more unsparing than that under the smart of which you are now grumbling and fuming so outrageously. When prudence has not whispered in your ear the expediency of silence, you have, by a fretful snappishness, by churlish effusions

1818.] The Quarterly Reviewers and Mr. Leigh Hunt.

of malignity, and by any random recrimination that happened to be thrown uppermost in the effervescence of your distempered imagination, evinced an inability to contend with sound reasoning and manly sense, and to withstand the attacks of your accusers, and a very uncomfortable consciousness that their reproaches were just and merited. You have not made, because you could not make any better replication than that of scurrilous generality. This is the hole into which you creep, as a cur saves his posteriors from the kick of a passenger whose heels he has bitten, when you are fairly turned round upon. Although every fibre were sensible of the lash which truth and justice have applied, prudence would have dictated a quiescent submission; but your irritation and temerity will urge you on to incur fresh contempt, and to create fresh mirth by publicly breaking your shins against the adamant of the Quarterly Review.

You are charged with profaneness, with sedition, and calumny. And what is your defence? Nothing but an attempt to cover your own shame by attributing to the highly eminent person who conducts that admirable work, which you and your brother-libellers find so pungent a thorn in your sides, every thing that is most base and despicable in human nature. He is, at once, when "turned the wrong side out" (as Shakspeare has it) by you, a liar, a hypocrite, and an ignoramus: he is a prey to jealousy, he is utterly destitute of principle, and his feelings are perfectly callous!! There is no reading your invective without feeling the force of the remark made by the Quarterly Reviewer-that you are "a pitiable man." You have not good sense enough to perceive-your anger is too precipitate to allow you to see-that such abuse as this can wound no man, because it is self-refuted. It vilifies nobody but yourself. "The dirt which (your) malevolence throws is ordure, and sticks to (your) own fingers."* Don Quixote, attacking a wind mill, cuts a less ridiculous figure than you, for you are beating the air with your blind vehemence.

It required an "effrontery" as "shameless"-a "want of principle" as "bare-faced" as your own, to assert, without blushing, that a man of Mr. Gifford's high attainments is" without

⚫ Espriella.

13

wit or understanding;" that "he is not a genius;" that he has only " a meagre reputation for wit;" and that "the collating (of) points and commas is the highest game his literary ambition can reach!" Does it become you, sir, who have a genius little elevated above the capacity for scribbling a paltry libel, to deny its genuine inspiration to the powerful satirist who penned the Baviad and Moviad? Is it decent in a versifier who has brewed Horace and Homer into English and made small beer of them," to speak so contemptuously of the elegant and spirited translator of Juvenal and Persins? Is any proof, either "of wit or understanding," afforded by mis-calling one of the best specimens of editorship in our language a “collating (of) points and commas?" Your zeal for the interests of literature is like the love which you profess for your country, and seems to consist in the depreciation of its dignity.

There is nothing more common, I have observed, than to find a man, remarkable for his disingenuousness, investing his antagonist with the very qualities which are most peculiarly characteristic of himself. How natural is it, then, that you who have contributed more than any other writer to convert the press into an engine of destruction to those principles and feelings which are the cement of society-whose trade it is to stimulate the passions, and to flatter the foolish and dangerous prejudices of the rabble-should represent Mr. Gifford to have but one object in view"to flatter the folly and vices of the great and powerful;" that you, whose self-conceit is proverbial, and whose interest is identified with popular delusion, should prate of the number of sacrifices he is obliged to make of common sense to his interest and self-conceit;" that you, whose pages abound with a garrulous pertness and a flippant petulance which really turn one sick, should ascribe to him" the smartness of a lady's waitingwoman;" that you, who are employed in removing from the minds of the populace the discriminating marks of truth and error, should tell us that "the distinction of truth and falsehood is lost upon" Mr. Gifford. These opprobrious terms, which are gross slander when applied to that gentleman, are so applicable to yourself that I would wish no other to express the estimation in which I hold you and your worthless productions.

I should, perhaps, ask you, who bring

14

Mr. Mitford on Sea Serpents.

these heavy charges against the Quarterly Reviewer, particularly that of flattering" the folly and vices of the great and powerful," where the examples of this literary prostitution are to be discovered? if it were not obvious that those charges are nothing but " driblets of spleen and impertinence." And every man of sense acquainted with the Eraminer will attend "not to what you shall say, but to what you shall prove." Your commendations alone can shake the character of the Quarterly Review. The hostility of foes such as Mr. Hunt is one of the most decisive testimonies in favour both of its excellence and of its

success.

The very useful hints which are kindly thrown out for your reformation by its writer will, I fear, be unavailing. "The itch of cavil festering to disease,' with which you are afflicted, is, I am afraid, an incurable malady. It is not to be doubted that you will still remain conspicuously eminent among our “overpolitic and notable men," who, by shew of concern for the public, and great insight into intrigues and cabals, labour to bring the government into suspicion, and to alienate the hearts of the people from their prince. Your vocation of traducing what is respectable, and of exalting what is despicable-of insulting the religion of your forefathers of unsettling the faith and of undermining the piety of your countrymen by your profane and ribald levity-of prophesying, in the midst of prosperity, our irrecoverable poverty-of "shewing the people dangers and enemies round them when none mean to hurt them"-of affirming the extinction of freedom, when our worst and prevailing complaint is a spirit of licentiousness:-this vocation is, in the present day, too profitable, I apprehend, to be laid aside. Boasting of the superior liberality of your own creed, of your superior enlargement of thought, and of your freedom from bigotry, you will continue, to the last, an obstinate bigot to laxness."* To use your own language," your understanding will become more distorted, and your feelings more callous;" and you will "drivel on with prostituted impotence and shameful effrontery."

Should, however, any "compunctious visitings" incline you to amend the error of your ways, the means of improvement

* An emphatical expression of the venerable Johnson.

[Aug. 1,

have been well pointed out to you in the humane and judicious instructions of the Quarterly Review. That you may avail yourself of them, sir, is rather the wish than the hope of your humble servant, June 18, 1818. ANGLICANUS.

ACCOUNT OF SEA SERPENTS. MR. EDITOR,

the

SOMETHING extraordinary is always making its appearance in America, and accounts of the same generally appear in the English journals grossly exaggerated. I am one of those who from experience have learnt the caution necessary to be observed before placing implicit confidence in the relations of our trans-atlantic brethren, and am old enough to remember the sensation caused by the supernatural appearances on the Apalachian mountains; glory by which they were surrounded, dispelling the darkness as the morning sun triumphs over the clouds of night; the vision lasted until some fanatic asserted it was the "descent of the New Jerusalem," when reason prevailed, and we heard of the inhabitants and them no more. Lately we have had “moving stones" in Carolina, but which ceased their motion when Dr. James, of New York, set on foot an enquiry concerning them. What I at present wish to observe upon is, the account of "huge Sea Serpents," lately said to have been seen along that wonderful coast; my intention however is not to enter into any disquisition whether or no they are of the same species with those of antiquity-those which destroyed Laocoon and yet figure in sculpture, that which proved the youthful nerves of Hercules, or the more sagacious one which foretold the death of Julian, and thereby proved itself a good christian. This I will leave to my American brethren who are well qualified for such researches. I merely intend to state that the Serpents of the Ocean, such as they are described in the accounts from America, are no novel appearance, but have been seen in the Mediterranean. I happened to be on board the Philomel, one of his Majesty's brigs of war, commanded by Captain Guison; having joined her on the 12th of December,

Those luminous appearances on the Apalachian mountains were ascribed to the particular state of the atmosphere. Some of the American philosophers even travelled from Philadelphia to observe them.

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