What a prime contributor he would have made!—but, to be sure, he was a Whig.

ODOHERTY.

So am I.-For that matter, half your best contributors are Whigs, I take it.

EDITOR.

Mum, for that, Ensign.-But, at least, I have nothing to do with the Scotch Kangaroo Canaille.

ODOHERTY.

They have nothing to do with you, you mean to say.

EDITOR.

They're a dirty, dull, detestable set.—I hate them all-I despise them all— except little Jeffrey.

ODOHERTY.

He's a clever chap, certainly, I have not given him a dressing these two years;-I shall give you a song upon him one of these days.

EDITOR.

Do.-What's a-foot among the Tumbledowns?

ODOHERTY.

The Holland-house gentry are chuckling very much over a little tid-bit of blasphemy, sent over by a certain learned Lord from Italy,-'tis call'd the "Irish Advent,”—'tis a base parody on the Advent of our Saviour,―'tis circulated widely among the same Thebans who blarney'd about Hogg's Chaldee.

Hogg's Chaldee!-good.

EDITOR.

ODOHERTY.

You would notice the puffs about another thing, called "the Royal Progress;"-they say 'tis writ by Mrs Morgan's ex-chevalier; and I can believe it, for it is equally dull and disloyal.

EDITOR.

Are these all the news you have picked up. How do the minor periodicals sell?

ODOHERTY.

Worse and worse. Taylor and Hessey are going down like the devil.— Colburn pays like a hero, for what you would fling into the fire. The copyright of the European was disposed of t'other day for about £1600, back numbers, plates, and all included. 'Twas about the best of them.

EDITOR.

I hope old Sir Richard is thriving.

ODOHERTY.

Capitally. He circulates between three and four thousand; and his advertisements are very profitable.-Why don't you sport a little extra matter of cover.

EDITOR.

At present mine are mostly preserves. I'll enlarge them, if you won't poach.

Very fair. 'Tis the only Gentleman's Magazine, besides your own.

EDITOR.

What is that thing called the Gazette of Fashion?

ODOHERTY.

'Tis a poor imitation of the Literary Gazette. Mr

they say,

patronizes it; but this can't be true, for it attacks, very shamefully, the man who did HIM more good than any body else ever will be able to do him, here or hereafter.

EDITOR.

Hercles' vein with a vengeance! You've been studying the Ecclectic, one would think.

VOL. XI.

3 A

ODOHERTY.

The Ecclectic is not so poor an affair as you insinuate, Mr Christopher. The principal writers tip us a little of the Snuffle and Whine,-but you are up to that yourself, when it serves your turn. Montgomery's articles are such as you would like very well to lay your own fist upon, I fancy.

EDITOR.

If Foster still writes in it, they have one of the first thinkers in England beneath their banner. I wish you would read him, before you begin to the auto-biography you've been talking about these three years.

Coleridge's did not pay.

ODOHERTY.

EDITOR.

But yours may,-nay, will,-must pay. I'll insure you of £3000 if you go to "the proper man.' I intend to give him the first offer of my own great work, my Armenian Grammar, which is now nearly ready for press.

ODOHERTY.

Your name will sell any thing. Is there much personality in the notes?

EDITOR.

I have cut up the commentators here and there. I have fixed an indelible stigma on old Scioppius.

ODOHERTY.

I'll defy you to write a sermon without being personal.

EDITOR.

I'll defy Dr Chalmers to do that. He is deuced severe on the Glasgow Bailies and Professors! I am told.

Jocular topics. 'Twas an arch-deacon sent me the Irish Melodies, which I know you have been owning every where for your own.

ODOHERTY.

I follow one great rule,-never to own any thing that is my own, nor deny any thing that is not my own.

EDITOR.

"Tis the age of owning and disowning. It was a long while or I believed Hope to be Anastasius.

ODOHERTY.

It will be a long while ere I believe that Anastasius wrote those quartos about mahogany. I believe he might furnish the wood, but, by Jericho, did he carve it at all?

EDITOR.

You are an incorrigible Irishnan. Have you any news from your own country? It seems to be in a fine state.

ODOHERTY.

Why, for that matter, I think we are very common-place in our national diversions. Sir William Chambers complained of nature being monotonous, for furnishing only earth, air, and water. Blood and whisky may sum up all the amusements of the Irish Whigs.-Burning, throat-cutting, shooting an old proctor or policeman-that's all. They fight in a cowardly fashion. There's my cousin, Tom Magrath, writes me he saw 500 of them run away from about forty gentlemen. One of the chief stimulants the poor devils have, is a prophecy of the papist Bishop Walmesley, (the same that goes under the name of Pastorini,) that the Protestant church is to be destroyed in 1825.

EDITOR.

Why, some few years ago, a godly Squire in Ayrshire here, published a thumping book, to prove that Buonaparte would die in 1825, at the siege of Jerusalem. The year 1825 will be a rare one when it comes.

1822.

Noetes Ambrosianæ. No. I.

ODOHERTY.

These events will furnish fine materials for a new hour's Tete-a-tete with the public.

EDITOR.

What a world of things will have happened ere 1825 !

ODOHERTY.

You will be knocked up ere then. You talk about your stomach-only see how little remains in the bottle!

EDITOR.

I had finished two ere you came in. I can never write without a bottle beside me. Judge Blackstone followed the same plan, he had always a bottle When Addison was comof port by him while he was at his commentaries. posing his Essay on the Evidences, he used to walk up and down the long room in Holland-house-there was a table with the black strap at each end, and he always turned up his little finger twice ere he had polished a sentence to his mind. I believe he took brandy while he was doing the last act of Cato. There is no good writing without one glass.

"Nemo bene potest scribere jejunus."

ODOHERTY.

I prefer smoking, on the whole. But I have no objection to a glass of punch along with it. It clears our mouth.

Experto crede Roberto."

I am glad to see you have Plays. I hate all that trash.

EDITOR.

ODOHERTY.

dropt your cursed humbug articles on German Is Kempferhausen defunct?

EDITOR.

I had a present of two aums of Johannisberg from him not a week ago.

ODOHERTY.

The piperly fellow once promised me a few dozens; but he took it amiss that I peppered him so at the Tent.

EDITOR.

I am sure you would have sold it to Ambrose if you had got it,-Will you have some supper?

Waiter, welsh rabbits for five, scolloped oysters for ten, six quarts of porter, and covers for two

WAITER.

It is all ready, sir'; Mr Ambrose knew what you would want the moment the Captain came in.

ODOHERTY.

I am thinking seriously of writing some book. What shape do you recommend? I was thinking of a quarto.

A duodecimo you mean; will a quarto go into a sabretache, or a work-basket, or a ridicule? Are you the bishop of Winchester?

ODOHERTY.

What bookseller do you recommend? [These are prime powldoodies!]

EDITOR.

Ebony to be sure, if he will give the best price. But be sure you don't abuse his good temper. There was a worthy young man done up only a few months ago by the Cockney poets. He gave £100 to one for a bundle of verses, (I forget the title,) of which just 30 copies were sold. They were all at him like leeches, and he was soon sucked to the bone. You aust not tip Ebony any shabby_trash-you must be upon honour, Mr Odoherty. You have a great name, and you must support it. If you mind your hits, you may rise as high as anybody I know in any of the slang lines.

You flatter me! Butter!

ODOHERTY!

EDITOR.

Not one lick! Egan is not worthy of holding the candle to your Boxiana; and yet Egan is a prime swell. You should get little Cruikshanks to draw the vignettes; your life would sell as well as Hogg's, or Haggart's, or any body else, that I remember.

No, d, I scorn to flatter you, or any man. I shall tell the truth, all the truth, and nothing but the truth. Do you expect me to say that you are a handsome man? Or that you have slim ancles? Or that you don't squint? Or that you understand the whole doctrine of quadrille? Or that you are the author of Waverley? Or the author of Anastasius? Are these the bams you expect?

EDITOR.

Say that I am the author of the Chaldee, and I am satisfied.

ODOHERTY.

No, I'll stick to my own rule. I'll claim it myself. I'll challenge Hogg if he disputes the point.

EDITOR.

I hope you'll shoot potatoes; for I could not afford to lose either of you! you are both of you rum ones to look at, but devils to go.

ODOHERTY.

I intend to be modest as to my amours.

EDITOR.

You had better not. The ladies won't buy if you do so. Your amour with Mrs Macwhirter raised my sale considerably.

ODOHERTY.

This is a very delicate age. I fear nothing at all high would go down with it.

EDITOR.

Why there's a vast deal of cant afloat as to this matter; people don't know what they are speaking about. Shew me any production of genius, written in our time, which does not contain what they pretend to abhor.

ODOHERTY.

Why, there's the Edinburgh Review-you must at least allow 'tis a decent work.

EDITOR.

Have you forgotten Sidney Smith's article about missionaries?—I won't repeat the names of some of them.

The Quarterly?

ODOHERTY.

EDITOR.

Why, Gifford and I are old boys, and past our dancing days; but I believe you will find some very sly touches here and there.

Byron ?

ODOHERTY.

EDITOR.

Poh! you're wild now. We may despise the cant about him, but you must confess that there's always a little of what's wrong in the best of his works. Even the Corsair seems to have flirted a bit now and then. And Juan, you know, is a perfect Richelieu.

ODOHERTY.

Have you any thing to say against the Waverley novels?

EDITOR.

Not much. Yet even old Dame Norna in the Pirate seems to have danced in her youth. I strongly suspect her son was a mere filius carnalis.

ODOHERTY.

What of Kenilworth, then?

EDITOR.

'Tis all full of going about the bush. One always sees what Elizabeth is thinking about. She has never some handsome fellow or other out of her mind. And then the scene where Leicester and Amy get up is certainly rather richly coloured. There is nothing a whit worse in the Sorrows of Werter, or Julia de Roubigné, or any of that sentimental set.

ODOHERTY.

Milman is a very well-behaved boy-You can say nothing of that sort against him.

EDITOR.

He is a very respectable man, and a clergyman to boot; but the bridal songs in his Fall of Jerusalem are not much behind what a layınan might have done. There are some very luxurious hits in that part of the performance. Did you attend old P―'s sale when you were in town?

ODOHERTY.

No, I can't say I did; but I hear there was a fine collection of the Facetiæ, and other forbidden fruits. A friend of mine got the editio princeps of Poggio, but he sweated for it. The Whigs bid high. They worked to keep all those tid-bits for themselves.

EDITOR.

Does this affair of Lord Byron's Mystery create any sensation in London?

ODOHERTY.

Very little. The Parsons about Murray's shop are not the most untractable people in the world, otherwise they would never have abstained so long from attacking Juan, Beppo, and the rest of Byron's improprieties-they that are so foul-mouthed against Shelly, and such insignificant blasphemers as that Cockney crew.

EDITOR.

I have often wondered at the face they shew in that omission.

Really?

ODOHERTY.

EDITOR.

No doubt a Bookseller must have something to say as to his own Review. But the thing should not be pushed too far, else a noodle can see through it.

Meaning me?

ODOHERTY.

EDITOR.

Not at all. But as to Cain, I entirely differ from the Chancellor. I think, if Cain be prosecuted, it will be a great shame. The humbug of the age will then have achieved its most visible triumph.

ODOHERTY.

I never saw it, but I thought it had been blasphemous.

EDITOR.

No, sir, I can't see that. The Society might have had some pretence had they fallen on Don Juan; but I suppose those well-fed Archdeacons, and so forth, have their own ways of observing certain matters.

ODOHERTY.

Have you seen Lord Byron's letter on the subject to Mr Murray ?

Yes; 'tis in the papers.

EDITOR.

ODOHERTY.

A bite! that's the prose edition. It was written originally in verse, but Murray's friends thought it would have more effect if translated into prose; and a young clergyman, who writes in the Quarterly, turned the thing very neatly, considering. I believe I have a copy of Lord Byron's own letter in my pocket.

EDITOR.

Let's see it.

ODOHERTY.

You shall have it.