have thought proper to connect yourself, in the estimation of the public. That Hazlitt's being even suspected of writing in your pay must do this, is too clear, too axiomatic, for me to say a word on the subject. But that you should hire him to vent personal abuse on men of genius, is going too far; and, as a friend, I must shortly expostulate with you on the subject.

You have, no doubt, heard people sometimes complain of what it pleases them to call the scurrilities of Kit's Magazine. You have seen Jeffrey, afraid to say it, keep hinting at the accusation. You have read the lamentations of this very Hazlitt about it; and if you take up the Liberal, which of course you do professionally, you will hear the vermin yelping to the same tune. Now, all the fraternity know that they are lying. We might be as scurrilous as a Billingsgate basketwoman, or as “legal Brougham, the moral chimney-sweeper," (as Byron calls him,) had we been Whigs, without exciting reprehension, or, had we been stupid Tories, without being clamoured against. But Tories we are, and, still worse, clever Tories; and, worst of all, Tories employed in demolishing Whiggery. Hinc illæ lacryma-hence the squeaking of the base creatures crouching under us. Any lie that could tend to annoy us, was a fair weapon; and the best they could think of, was this charge of personal scurrility. We beg leave to deny it; but suppose it for a moment true, will you, Mr. Thomas, have the goodness to find any thing in our pages which can, in personality, compare with this character of Mr. Fuseli, which you have printed, Mr. Thomas, and which you have paid for. The vermin who wrote it, has, it appears, suffered some slight from that great man, and accordingly we are told, that

"His (Fuseli's) ideas are gnarled, hard. and distorted like-HIS FEATURES; his theories, stalking and straddle-legged like-HIS GAIT; his projects, aspiring and gigantic like-HIS GESTURES; his performance, uncouth and dwarfish like-HIS PERSON. His pictures are also like him. self, WITH EYE BALLS OF STONE STUCK IN RIMS OF TIN, AND MUSCLES TWISTED TOGETHER LIKE ROPES OR WIRES."-New Monthly Magazine, No. XXXIII. p. 214.

Yes, Mr. Campbell, that is the language you have used towards Mr. Fuseli. I say you have used, for the fellow who wrote it is below even contempt. Fuseli would be degraded if he horse-whipped him; he might order his footman to kick him, perhaps, but he would in that case owe an apology to the flunky for employing him in such dirty work. I say it is to you he is to look for redress for this brutal attack, which is about the vilest thing I have seen for a long time, even among the vile nesses of Whiggery. What, sir! do you think, that because Mr. Fuseli is a great painter, you are to take indecent liberties with his person? Do you think yourself entitled to abuse the outward configuration given him by his Creator, which neither you nor he could alter? Do you think it just and gentlemanlike criticism on his works to fling ribald jests on his features, his gait, his gestures, his person, his eye-balls, and his muscles? If you do, Mr. Campbell, you are sadly altered for the worse.

Misery, they say, brings a man in contact with strange bed-fellows; so, it would appear, does editing. Had any man, three years ago, told me, that Thomas Campbell, the author of the "Pleasures of Hope," of “Gertrude,” of “O'Connor's Child," of the "Mariners of England," would be guilty of such filth, I am pretty sure the answer would be to pull him by the nose. What the motive of the fellow, whose pen traced the words, was, I, of course, cannot tell-perhaps Fuseli discharged him from the situation of colour-grinder, a post to which he might aspire through vanity; but, that you, Mr. Campbell, should, in cold blood, have sent such a piece of offal to the press, does both astonish and grieve me. I hope we shall have an ample apology to Fuseli in your next number; if we have not, I shall only conclude, that he despises the quarter from which the attack has come-and just think of that! Fuseli the painter, despising Campbell the poet!

You may, perhaps, remember what an outcry was raised here, in Edinburgh, I mean, against Hogg's incomparable jeu-d'esprit, the Chaldee MS. Even yet the things about the Scotsman keep carping at it. There was some cant mixed up with the cry, such as "insult offered to scriptural language," "parody on Ezekiel," &c.; but that, you know, was not the real ground of offence. It was complained that it was personal, and reflected on bodily defect or misfortune. A long time after it was published, this complaint was renewed with all the bitterness of envious hate, by an infatuated editor of a Magazine, in that brutal series of attacks on us which produced such lamentable results.

Now, if a verse or two of this Manuscript did transgress in this sort, much may be said in its excuse, for the people who gathered about Constable's periodical, were so utterly obscure, poor gazetteers, and other. such third-rate Grub-street folk, that there was no way of describing them without alluding to their appearance. They had done nothing by which they could be known-they were merely good-for-nothing hacks, who had banded themselves together to put down, in obedience to their employers' tradesmen-like views, a rival magazine. How then could Hogg avoid describing their persons, if he thought fit to mention them at all? The Chaldee was, moreover, meant for any thing rather than for malignity, and, as the Shepherd says in his Life, all that was looked for a retort courteous" or uncourteous, of the same kind. It was, in fact, a mere local joke; and if it be read or relished beyond Newington or Stockbridge, it is only on account of its internal humour and merit, just as we now read, with all the freshness of the original fun-Dean Swift's papers on Partridge, Curl, Norris, and fifty others, of whom we know little, and care less. But take the very worst verses of it, and compare them with this attack on the person of a man of fervid and original genius, a foreigner too, who has domiciled among us, and you will be ashamed of yourself if you ever condescended to join in the clamour of your Whig associates against the scurrilities of this 'Magazine.

was

We were also most roundly rated because Z. or Ochlenschlaeger, or some other of our friends, cracked a joke on this scribe of yours, Hazlitt, for being "pimpled." None of us knows any thing of his person

al appearance-how could we?-But what designation could be more apt to mark the scurvy, verrucose, uneven, foully-heated, disordered, and repulsive style of the man? He interpreted us au pied du lettre, and took much pains to convict us of slander. For any thing I know to the contrary, he got a horse-collar, and took his stand at Smithfield, to grin through it, and exclaim to the drovers, "O ye judges of sound flesh! bear witness that I am unpimpled, and Blackwood's Magazine is a scurrilous publication." He certainly did things almost as absurd. But suppose it was meant in its most offensive signification, will you accuse us of personality, and then permit your own pages to be the vehicles of abuse against a man so infinitely the superior of the vermin we worriedto call him distorted in feature, straddle-legged in gait, gigantic in gesture, dwarfish in person, hideous in eyeballs, and furnished with ropetwisted muscles? For shame, Thomas, for shame! If you do, whether you have won gold by your connexion with Henry Colburn or not, it will be evident you have improved in brass.

I am, Dear Tom,

Yours, however, for auld langsyne,

Southside, Sept. 9. 1823.

TIMOTHY TICKLER.

THE FLOWER-SPIRIT.

A FAÉRY TALE.

I've heard it said that flowers have music in them,
With which they lull the truant bee to sleep,

And so preserve their sweets.

THE Day had closed his languid eyes,
And Evening sent her lucid star

To herald through the silent skies
The coming of her roseate car.
The winds were resting in their caves,
The birds reposed on every tree;
And sea-fowl on the glassy waves
Were slumbering in security:
And golden hues o'erspread the rills,
And tinged the valley's robe of green;
While, far above the giant hills,

The moon sat gazing o'er the scene.
And Night, that ever-changeful maid,

Anon.

Seem'd lingering in her own dark bower,

With all her storms, as if afraid

To mar the beauty of that hour;

When Florestine roam'd sadly on,

And thought of one, with speechless pain,
Who to the distant wars had

gone,

And never might return again.

She thought of him, and, in a vale,
Where Nature in her beauty smiled,
The maid reclined-serene, but pale

As Sorrow's gentlest, saddest child.
She turn'd her eyes, with mourning dim,
Towards the moon that shone above,
As if her light could tell of him

For whom she felt both grief and love.
Then bending to the earth her gaze,
And weeping o'er her hapless lot,
She saw, illumed by Evening's rays,
A simple, sweet "Forget-me-not."
At other times-in other mood-

The little flower perhaps were slighted,
But in the dreary solitude

Of parted love, and pleasures blighted,
Her mind on that alone could muse-
Her eye on that alone could rest.-
Was it that pearl'd and shining dews
Lay glittering on its azure breast?
Was it that other flowers, adorn'd

With hues the brightest heaven could print, Rose proudly round, as if they scorn'd

Its faint and unobtrusive tint?

Or was't the name that so enthrall'd,

And bound her, as with magic spell;
And, without voice or language, call'd
The hermit, Thought, from Memory's cell?
"Poor flower? (she said) that liv'st apart,
And shrink'st before the noon-day sun,
No tongue could whisper to my heart
More feelingly than thou hast done.
For though, to share thy humble state,
No flower, akin to thee, appears,
Thou droop'st not o'er thy lonely fate,
But smilest through twilight's crystal tears.
Oh! thou, in hours of grief and care,
My voiceless monitor shalt be,
And I will shun the fiend, Despair,
And resignation learn-from thee."

She sigh'd no more-and ceased to weep-
And bow'd her head in meekness lowly:
The floweret seem'd to wake from sleep,
And ope its little blue eyes slowly.

The leaves expanded, and a sound
Came breathing from them, like a sigh

That mingles with the air around,
And as it mingles seems to die.

And these the accents that were heard
To issue from that azure cave,

In tones as sweet as ever bird

Gave to the woods or listening wave.

"Thou hast come to me-thou hast come to me,
In thy gloom of heart and thy misery;
And never yet, or in spring-time's bloom,
Or summer-months laden with rich perfume,
Or Autumn's sun-shine, or Winter's rain.
Did the wretched-one hasten to me in vain.
"I am the spirit that loves to dwell
Within the "Forget-me-not's" fairy cell:
But when brother spirits to me resort,
In the roomy tulip I hold my court:

And when bells of the lily ring loud in the air,
The sylphs from each floweret are revelling there.

"Thou hast come to me-thou hast come to me-
In thy gloom of heart and thy misery:
And thou shalt find that the dews I meet,
In my world of flowers, are choice and sweet
As bee ever rifled, or summer-winds stole
From the violet's cup or the rose's bowl

"Linger here 'till the eve has faded,
And the sky's dark hair with stars is braided:
Linger here 'till the night is o'er thee,

And the hills and the valleys lie dark before thee;

And when three bright stars shall fall from above,

Turn to the west and thoul't see thy love.

Thou wilt hear a voice through the stillness creeping,
Thou wilt mark an eye through the green leaves peeping;
By a gentle step shall the earth be press'd,

And thy head shall lie on thy Reginald's breast:
Then thou'lt think of the spirit that loves to dwell

Within the "Forget-me-not's" fairy cell.

"Maiden, farewell!-Maiden, farewell!
Think of the spirit that loves to dwell
Within the "Forget-me-not's" fairy cell."

The voice's gentle murmur pass'd,

The floweret's leaves in silence closed,

And Night and all her stars at last
In the blue fields of heaven reposed.

JANUARY, 1824.-No. 261.

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