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

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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

the fools in the kingdom seemed to have risen up with one accord, and exclaimed, let us write for the theatres!""

Strange must have been Gifford's feelings, when, in the Feast of the Poets, he found his eulogizer falling as trenchantly on the author of the Baviad and Moviad as the Baviad and Moviad had fallen on the dramatists. The Tory editor discerned plainly enough, that if a man's politics were of no consideration with the Quarterly Review, provided the politician was his critical admirer, they were very different things with the editor Radical. He found also, that the new satirist had ceased to.regard the old one as a "critical authority;" and he might not have unwarrantably concluded, that I had conceived some personal disgust against him as a man; for such, indeed, was the secret of my attack.

The reader is perhaps aware, that George the Fourth, when he was Prince of Wales, had a mistress of the name of Robinson. She was the wife of a man of no great character; had taken to the stage for a livelihood; was very handsome, wrote verses, and is said to have excited a tender emotion in the bosom of Charles Fox. The Prince allured her from the stage, and lived with her for some years. After their separation, and during her decline, which took place before she was old, she became afflicted with rheumatism; and as she solaced her pains, and perhaps

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added to her subsistence, by writing verses, and as her verses turned upon her affections, and she could not discontinue her old vein of love and sentiment, she fell under the lash of this masculine and gallant gentleman, Mr. Gifford, who, in his Baviad and Mæviad, amused himself with tripping up her "crutches," particularly as he thought her on her way to her last home. This he considered the climax of the fun.

"See," exclaimed he, after a hit or two at other women, like a boy throwing stones in the street,

"See Robinson forget her state, and move

On crutches tow'rds the grave to 'Light o' Love.'”

This is the passage which put all the gall into anything which I said, then or afterwards, of Gifford, till he attacked myself and my friends. At least, it disposed me to think the worst of whatever he wrote; and as reflection did not improve nor suffering soften him, he is the only man I ever attacked, respecting whom I have felt no regret.

It would be easy for me, at this distance of time, to own that Gifford possessed genius, had such been the case. It would have been easy for me at any time. But he had not a particle. The particle. The scourger of poetasters was himself a poetaster. When he had done with his whip, everybody had a right to take it up, and lay it over the scourger's shoulders; for