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P. S. The printer wants a yard of copy. So here goes for a delicious plunge into " St. Ronan's Well." Her Spirit comes in the very nick of time,

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Bah-I was a fool-taken in at my years by a title-page. While my head was running on pilgrims and votaries-History falsified in facts only that she might be made true in feelings and principles-behold, I stumbled on a mere modern watering-place. St. Ronan's Well turns out to be little better than Bagnigge Wells. Seriously this won't do, Sir Walter. It is true, your lees are better than any other man's wine; and I am not comparing you with any body else, when I say you have not done well.

You were never famous for

your plots; but this is worthy of the Minerva Press. The public shall be judge. Two half-brothers, sons of Lord Etherington, are sent to Scotland, where one-the true man -falls in love with a young lady, whom we do not envy him : the other treacherously personates our hero, and is married in his name. There are no Monimia doings; and yet somehow the thing drives the heroine mad, and the hero melancholy; these two wise heads having determined that the mistake cannot be rectified, upon some German idea about "the nuptial benediction having fallen on the head of a brother!" By and bye, the bad man having, for divers good reasons, let the lady alone for some years, wishes to marry her over again; then come plots and counter-plots, blood and wounds as plenty as in Logan, and finally the heroine wanders about very mad indeed, and dies just in time to close the last volume. There is an amusing-that is, rather amusing-old landlady, and a nabob who is pretty well. The wicked man is a second-hand Lovelace, somewhat the worse for wear, who sits down quietly (for the benefit of the reader) to tell his intimate friend, in a long treble letter, that he, said Lovelace, is a great rascal. In our minds it is decidedly the worst of the Scotch novels.

More copy! Thou insatiable Press !-thouiron mother'thou cormorant-thou' daughter of the horseleech,'-Well, take this but I grudge it thee-an extempore song, which I had carefully committed to memory for our next Club :

HERE'S to young Vyvyan's exquisite puns,
Here's to old Heaviside's lead, sir,
Here's to pert Paterson's bold elder-guns,'
And here's to poor Frazer, that's dead, sir.
Let us all troll

Joy to each soul,

I warrant he'll prove an excuse for the bowl.

Here's to sage Murray, whose learning we prize,
And here's to poor Medley, who's none, sir,
Here's to great Hazelfoot's wise peering eyes,
And to Willoughby's most devout fun, sir.
Let us, &c.

Here's to Montgomery's Muse of delight,
And to blue-devil'd Davenant's dreams, sir;
Here's to grave Haller's political flight,
And to Merton's most eloquent streams, sir.
Let us, &c.

For let us be ripe, sir, or let us be green,
Sage or witty, I care not a pen, sir,
So fill to the sale of the great Magazine,
And a bumper to all her brave men, sir.
Let us, &c.

PATERSON AYMER.

Given at my Chambers,

30th December, 3 A. M.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES,

Northumberland court.

KNIGHT'S

QUARTERLY MAGAZINE.

THE EDITOR.

No. III.

MY DEAR PUBLIC.

THE inward satisfaction I derived from my Christmas address to you-a satisfaction which good faith and sincerity will always ensure, has determined me regularly to keep up our quarterly correspondence, and to allow no intermission in the periodical discharge of my debt of gratitude and friendship.

On this occasion, my dear Public, I have to address you with no complaints, but a few regrets. I have not to inveigh against VYVYAN's idleness, but I have to deplore his head-ach, -I have not to accuse his volatility, but I have to lament over his wisdom. He has produced "A second Folly," but he will not print it; and he vows he will play the fool no more.-My constant MONTGOMERY has suffered a pause in his inspirations, and therefore you will see no more of the beauties of "La Belle Tryamour" till they come with the roses in the summer's lustihood. Our MURRAY too, the most elegant of scholars, has been summoned from his academical quiet to the bustle of the world; and we therefore, my Public, must wait for our classical delights till he again woos the study and "the cloister pale." These disappointments do us all service, and teach us to set a proper value upon our enjoyments.

I have, however, my Public, secured some new allies, and those of a most promising metal. Of their merits, I leave you to judge without any invidious particularity on my part.

One of the great mortifications that an Editor has to sustain is the difficulty of dealing with contributors who come too late, or come too long;-who bring you a capital article on the eve of publication, or produce three sheets, when you had speculated upon three pages. The difficulty of retaining good

writers under such contingencies is only to be exceeded by the trouble of getting rid of bad ones under any circumstances.

It was this morning only, the 29th of March, that I received a capital review on the condemned passages of Mr. Shee's "Alasco." The author observes, that "out of the whole play these are the only lines that possess the slightest interest, and that these are valuable, not from their poetry or their political economy-not for their literary fire, or their public spirit but as proofs of the necessity of locking up for ever the powers of the licenser, when such a dish of skimmed milk” could move the veteran Mr. Colman, the younger, to their exercise. In this age of national prosperity and public tranquillity, is the very chaff of liberalism, such as Mr. Shee has scattered, to be dreaded by the representative of the British court, as if it might by possibility contain one grain of sedition, to grow up into another Revolutionary Tree of Liberty? The notes of Mr. Shee are running over with the self-complacency of one who has endured persecution; and we can almost see him striding through his atelier, exclaiming with Lord Grizzle,

66 Zounds, I'll be a rebel."

There is only one way to account for the secret of Mr.Colman's rejection of the tragedy. He had a friendship for the author, and knowing the oblivious pit into which he would fall, if his play had ordinary treatment, he magnanimously sacrificed his good reputation to his kindness, in lending it, by its rejection, that temporary currency which, as a work of art alone, it could never acquire."

So far our Reviewer. His remarks are somewhat hard, but I think the whole absurdity of the affair, on all sides, is fully established by the terror occasioned such windy nothings as the following lines, which were dashed out by the Licenser, and which Mr. Shee prints in Italics :

"Tyrants, proud lord, are never safe nor should be."

“Our private injuries yield to public wrong,

The avenging sword; -we strike but for our country."

"To brook dishonour from a knave in place."

"Our country's wrongs unite us."

"May every Tarquin meet a Brutus still,
And every tyrant feel one."

" "Tis virtue to avenge our country's wrongs,
And self-defence to strike at an usurper."

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