understanding, and make up for the obvious want of ability by a barefaced want of principle. The same set of threadbare commonplaces, the same second-hand assortment of abusive nicknames, the same assumption of little magisterial airs of superiority, are regularly repeated; and the ready convenient lie comes in aid of the dearth of other resources, and passes off with impunity in the garb of religion and loyalty. If no one finds it out, why then there is no harm done, -snug's the word; or if it should be detected, it is a good joke, shows spirit and invention in proportion to its grossness and impudence, and it is only a pity that what was so well meant in so good a cause should miscarry! The end sanctifies the means; and you keep no faith with heretics in religion or government. You are under the protection of the Court, and your zeal for your king and country entitles you to say what you choose of every public writer who does not do all in his power to pamper the one into a tyrant, and to trample the other into a herd of slaves. You derive your weight with the great and powerful from the very circumstance that takes away all real weight from your authority, viz. that it is avowedly, and upon every occasion, exerted for no one purpose but to hold up to hatred and contempt whatever opposes in the slightest degree, and in the most flagrant instances of abuse, their pride and passions. You dictate your opinions to a party, because not one of your opinions is formed upon an honest conviction of the truth or justice of the case, but by collusion with the prejudices, caprice, interest, or vanity of your employers. The mob of well-dressed readers who consult the Quarterly Review know that there is no offence in it. They put faith in it because they are aware that it is "false and hollow, but will please the ear," that it will tell them nothing but what they would wish to believe. Your reasoning comes under the head of court news; your taste is a standard of the prevailing ton in certain circles, like Ackerman's dresses for May.1 When you damn an author, one knows that he is not a favourite at Carlton House.2 When you say that an author cannot write common sense or English, you mean that he does not believe in the doctrine of divine right. 1 Ackerman published a Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions, etc. 2 The residence of the Prince Regent.

Of course the clergy and gentry will not read such an author. Your praise or blame has nothing to do with the merits of the work, but with the party to which the writer belongs, or is in the inverse ratio of its merits. The dingy cover that wraps the pages of the Quarterly Review does not contain a concentrated essence of taste and knowledge, but is a receptacle for the scum and sediment of all the prejudice, bigotry, ill-will, ignorance, and rancour, afloat in the kingdom. This the fools and knaves who pin their faith on you know, and it is on this account they pin their faith on you. They come to you for a scale not of literary talent but of political subserviency. You know very well that if a particle of truth or fairness were to find its way into a single number of your publication, another Quarterly Review would be set up to-morrow for the express purpose of depriving every author, in prose or verse, of his reputation and livelihood, who is not a regular hack of the vilest cabal that ever disgraced this or any other country.

There is something in your nature and habits that fits you for the situation into which your good fortune has thrown you. In the first place, you are in no danger of exciting the jealousy of your patrons by a mortifying display of extraordinary talents, while your sordid devotion to their will and to your own interest at once ensures their gratitude and contempt. To crawl and lick the dust is all they expect of you, and all you can do. Otherwise they might fear your power, for they could have no dependence on your fidelity; but they take you with safety and fondness to their bosoms, for they know that if you cease to be a tool you cease to be anything. If you had an exuberance of wit, the unguarded use of it might sometimes glance at your employers; if you were sincere yourself, you might respect the motives of others; if you had a sufficient understanding, you might attempt an argument and fail in it. But luckily for yourself and your admirers, you are but the dull echo, "the tenth transmitter," of some hackneyed jest; the want of all manly and candid feeling in yourself only excites your suspicion and antipathy to it in others, as something at which your nature recoils; your slowness to understand makes you quick to misrepresent; and you infallibly make nonsense of what you cannot possibly conceive. What seem your wilful

blunders are often the felicity of natural parts, and your want of penetration has all the appearance of an affected petulance! Again, of an humble origin yourself, you recommend your performances to persons of fashion by always abusing "low people," with the smartness of a lady's waiting-woman and the independent spirit of a travelling tutor. Raised from the lowest rank to your present despicable eminence in the world of letters, you are indignant that any one should attempt to rise into notice, except by the same regular trammels and servile gradations, or should go about to separate the stamp of merit from the badge of sycophancy. The silent listener in select circles, and menial tool of noble families, you have become the oracle of church and state. The purveyor to the prejudices or the passions of a private patron succeeds, by no other title, to regulate the public taste. You have felt the inconveniences of poverty, and look up with base and grovelling admiration to the advantages of wealth and power; you have had to contend with the mechanical difficulties of a want of education, and you see nothing in learning but its mechanical uses. A self-taught man naturally becomes a pedant, and mistakes the means of knowledge for the end, unless he is a man of genius; and you, sir, are not a man of genius. From having known nothing originally, you think it a great acquisition to know anything now, no matter what or how small it is nay, the smaller and more insignificant it is, the more curious you seem to think it, as it is farther removed from common sense and human nature. The collating of points and commas is the highest game your literary ambition can reach to, and the squabbles of editors are to you infinitely more important than the meaning of an author. You think more of the letter than the spirit of a passage, and in your eagerness to show your minute superiority over those who have gone before you, generally miss both...

There cannot be a greater nuisance than a dull, envious, pragmatical, low-bred man, who is placed as you are in the situation of the editor of such a work as the Quarterly Review. Conscious that his reputation stands on very slender and narrow grounds, he is naturally jealous of that of others. He insults over unsuccessful authors; he hates successful ones. He is angry at the faults of a work, more angry at its excellences. If an opinion is

old, he treats it with supercilious indifference; if it is new, it provokes his rage. Everything beyond his limited range of inquiry appears to him a paradox and an absurdity, and he resents every suggestion of the kind as an imposition on the public and an imputation on his own sagacity. He cavils at what he does not comprehend, and misrepresents what he knows to be true. Bound to go through the nauseous task of abusing all those who are not, like himself, the abject tools of power, his irritation increases with the number of obstacles he encounters, and the number of sacrifices he is obliged to make of common sense and decency to his interest and self-conceit. Every instance of prevarication he wilfully commits makes him more in love with hypocrisy, and every indulgence of his hired malignity makes him more disposed to repeat the insult and the injury. His understanding becomes daily more distorted, and his feelings more and more callous. Grown old in the service of corruption, he drivels on to the last with prostituted impotence and shameless effrontery; salves a meagre reputation for wit, by venting the driblets of his spleen and impertinence on others; answers their arguments by confuting himself; mistakes habitual obtuseness of intellect for a particular acuteness, not to be imposed upon by shallow appearances, unprincipled rancour for zealous loyalty, and the irritable, discontented, vindictive, peevish effusions of bodily pain and mental imbecility for proofs of refinement of taste and strength of understanding.

Such, sir, is the picture of which you have sat for the outline; all that remains is to fill up the little, mean, crooked, dirty details....

THE FIGHT

1822

[Published in the New Monthly Magazine, February number. The great prize-fight had occurred on December 11, 1821. Augustine Birrell says of this famous essay: "It is full of poetry, life, and motion, Shakespeare, Hogarth, and Nature."]

READER, have you ever seen a fight? If not, you have a pleasure to come, at least if it is a fight like that between the Gas-man and Bill Neate. The crowd was very great when we

arrived on the spot; open carriages were coming up, with streamers flying and music playing, and the country-people were pouring in over hedge and ditch in all directions, to see their hero beat or be beaten. The odds were still on Gas, but only about five to four. Gully 1 had been down to try Neate, and had backed him considerably, which was a damper to the sanguine confidence of the adverse party. About two hundred thousand pounds were pending. The Gas says he has lost 3000l. which were promised him by different gentlemen if he had won. He had presumed too much on himself, which had made others presume on him. This spirited and formidable young fellow seems to have taken for his motto the old maxim that "there are three things necessary to success in life-Impudence! Impudence! Impudence!" It is so in matters of opinion, but not in the fancy, which is the most practical of all things; though even here confidence is half the battle, but only half. Our friend had vapoured and swaggered too much, as if he wanted to grin and bully his adversary out of the fight. "Alas, the Bristol man was not so tamed!" "This is the gravedigger," would Tom Hickman exclaim in the moments of intoxication from gin and success, showing his tremendous right hand; "this will send many of them to their long homes; I have n't done with them yet!" Why should he — though he had licked four of the best men within the hour, yet why should he threaten to inflict dishonourable chastisement on my old master Richmond, a veteran going off the stage, and who has borne his sable honours meekly? Magnanimity, my dear Tom, and bravery, should be inseparable. Or why should he go up to his antagonist, the first time he ever saw him at the Fives Court, and measuring him from head to foot with a glance of contempt, as Achilles surveyed Hector, say to him, "What, are you Bill Neate? I'll knock more blood out of that great carcase of thine, this day fortnight, than you ever knocked out of a bullock's!" It was not manly, 't was not fighter-like. If he was sure of the victory (as he was not), the less said about it the better. Modesty should accompany the fancy as its shadow. The best men were always the best behaved. . . . Perhaps I press this point too much on a fallen man - Mr. Thomas A famous prize-fighter.

2 A cant term for the sport and its representatives.