is humanity of the very thought of being unjust. But aware of this cause of the infirmity, (which to know handsomely is to overcome) and anxious to make amends for any wrong pointed out to me, I am always fancying that others are willing to go through the same reflections, and seat themselves as tranquilly at the end of them. I forget that you cannot arrive at any superiority of candour, by whatever process of adversity and mortification, but the tone it gives you serves only to exasperate an uncandid enemy.

Among twenty articles which I understand have been written against me in various publications, one has appeared in the Quarterly Review, such as I should no more have noticed, or looked at, than the others, had it not been for a pretended fact or two, which it may be as well to set aside. It has been well observed, that to answer these Blackwood people properly, (for the Review, it seems, is now connected with the unprincipled

calumniators, and convicted cowards of that gang, and the article in question has all the marks of being written by one of them,) it would be necessary to set up a work like their own, in which truth and decency should be treated with avowed contempt; no connexion spared, however private; and people's very lameness and calamities thrust in their teeth, as if they were crimes. And indeed it would be no wonder, some day, if some such thing were to happen; and a pretty Devil-on-TwoSticks' view afforded us, by persons more angry than conscientious, of all that has been done, and can be fancied, among the hypocrites of the establishment. But this, at all events, is not a task for me; who, besides being hampered with humanities, can see no reason for objecting to the use of falsehood by others, if we can persuade ourselves it is warrantable in us.

Others

might pretend, that it was as good in their

hands, and for some like benefit of re-action.

The article in the Quarterly is of the old description of things of this kind;-shallow and mean; colouring all, as it goes, to suit its purposes; criticising the pretensions of another with nothing but airs and assumptions; and paying the cause it worships the usual happy compliment, of thinking falsehood and malignity necessary to its support. The sole object is to put the book down; to put it down,—not because there is nothing in it, or it is not true, (for the Reviewer could as little write it, as he could imitate the truth of it,) but because it is full of a sincerity and speculation equally hateful to the "rottenness in the state of Denmark ;” and this sincerity is to be put down by falsehood! and this speculation by dullness! a mode of settling things, which luckily is impossible in the long run, and is far less easy than it used to be for the time. Yes, as the Reviewer repeats with an hysterical impulse,

"the schoolmaster is abroad."

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Twopenny

trash" has got beyond Six Shilling; and hundreds take up the Quarterly Review and laugh at it, who, a dozen years back, would have heard the canting rogue at his half-way house, and thought there was something in him. Mr. Murray should really keep a more sober eye on the times, and get cleverer men to do his work; for public knowledge is advancing, while he is dozing; and the old mediocrity will not do, however malignant. An additional portion of servility was still less desirable. His new

writer, with a solemnity that would better have become the old lady in the Castle of Tillietudlem, than a modern pretender to literature, talks of "high rank,” as if it were one of the cardinal virtues. Temperance, sobriety, and

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high rank," he thinks, (which, by the way, is not considerate towards his employer,) are qualities that become a young gentleman; but temperance and sobriety may be wanting, and the matter decently hushed up, provided there be

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high rank." The mention of the deficiency is unpolite and unedifying; not to pay homage to the possession, is unfeeling.

Agreeably to this system of morals, it is curious to see, in his review of the present work, what a number of things, extracts from letters, &c. are brought in to tell in Lord Byron's favour, which really tell against him, and furnish aggravated proofs of his little claim to be esteemed. Among these are his virulence against Mr. Keats and others; his remark, (in a spirit of infinite aristocratical absurdity, which shows how much he had been injured by being a Lord,) that they never lived in high life nor solitude!" (as if the millions of human hearts that lay between were nothing!) his splenetic inventions against others, and his extraordinary forgetfulness of his own offences.

The passage is quoted where he speaks of my "not very tractable children." Thank God, they were not tractable