NOTE A.

(Page 55.)

Extract from Remarks by the Rev. H. Phillpotts, D.D. on Mr. Jeffrey's Note in No. LXXV. of the Edinburgh Review.

[Published in Blackwood's Magazine, May, 1823.]

I HAVE done with my Reviewer. Of the Editor of the Review something still remains to be said.

He seeks, it seems, to extenuate the injuries of which I have complained. "The charges against Dr. P. in "the Review are little more, than that he is a violent

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political agitator, and had written intemperate pam"phlets and addresses." Has then this Editor fallen so low? Can he stoop to the paltry artifice of dissembling, that in the very page from which these charges are selected by him, I am called by implication" a tool "of party," "a hireling of government," "a slanderer,"

a libeller,”—nay, that in the same paragraph, not by implication, but in broad and express terms, I am denounced to all the world as a "Calumniator?"—And is

this, in his estimation, but a little charge? He has, unhappily, too much reason to wish it to be deemed so. But let me remind him of the definition of calumny, given on a memorable occasion in his own Review,* when some of his associates were suffering under the chastisement of a far more powerful hand, than is now raised against himself. "Calumny," we were then truly told, when the honour of a Reviewer required that the imputation of it should be repelled as unwarrantable," Calumny is an attack on the moral cha"racter, and is grounded in falsehood. It may be de"fined, if we mistake not, a fictitious recital, made for "the purpose of hurting the moral character of an in"dividual, or a body of individuals." Is it a trifle, then, that the name of a Christian minister should be branded with such an epithet, through all the wide career of the Edinburgh Review?

The Editor will not say that it is. He is become exquisitively sensitive on this subject:

66 Begins to kick, and fling, and wince,"

"on seeing his name blazoned in capital letters in all "the newspapers and shop windows, in connexion with "the charges of falsehood and malignity," brought against his Review, and of one other charge directed against himself. I am glad that even-handed Justice has done her work so faithfully. The Editor's own feelings on this occasion, may perhaps give him some lasting touches of remorse, for more than twenty long and guilty years of wanton or wilful disregard of the

*See Edinburgh Review, Vol. XVI. p. 158, under Article entitled "Calumnies against Oxford."

feelings of others. Let him, in his present mood, look on the catalogue of honourable and distinguished names, which he and his confederates have laboured to make the sport or the victims of their spleen, their arrogance, or their party-fury. Let him reflect on the meanness, as well as the injustice, of abusing the power, which the extensive circulation of his Journal gave him, to "blazon those names" in every quarter to which English literature could reach, "in connection with epithets" scarcely less painful (except that they were, for the most part, unmerited) than those under which he now writhes, with the bitter consciousness that they are deserved. Let him remember, that during so long a period, he has by himself, or his minions, pandared to all the envious and malignant feelings of his readersused every engine of literary torture that could wound and lacerate ingenuous minds-left unessayed no single gradation of cruelty, from ruffian violence, down to the subtler and safer expedients of mock candour and contemptuous commendation-to establish a despotism of the pen, which, like other despotisms, has ended in destroying itself. Let him read in the indignation, or the pity, of every impartial mind, his own large share in the common ignominy, which has long been thickening around his Band :—And then let him, if he will, affect to hide his shame under the babyish plea, that he did not load the piece, he only primed it and drew the trigger;-in language of his own, that he "merely su

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perintended or sanctioned the publication!" and therefore, "though he might have been legally re"sponsible, he is really at a loss to understand how he "could be deemed morally or individually blameable;”

-that he has, in short, only hired himself out to a bookseller, for some stated hundreds of miserable pelf, to be the midwife and the nurse to every unfathered brood of calumnies, which the malice of his faction shall engender.-If he will, let him talk thus, and persist to defend what he knows is indefensible. But, rather, let him seek, in this his day of deep humiliation, the real benefit, which he ought to draw from it. Let' him meditate on the painful contrast of what he is, with what he might have been-and what he yet may be: -And then let him cast off at once the vile slough with which he is encumbered-again stand forth in some ingenuous form, and vindicate anew his title to that high respect, of which no man, but himself, could rob him.-Let him do this, and he will yet have reason to rejoice, that in one, whom he had doomed for his victim, he has found a monitor and a friend.

H. P.

NOTE B.

(Page 96.)

IN the same Number of the Edinburgh Review, which contains the Article "On George III. &c." is one on "Ellis's Original Letters," in which the spirit of that Journal takes occasion to vent itself in certain comments on the character of King Charles I.

Charles had, it seems, written a Letter to Dr. Juxon, Bishop of London, containing " A Case of Conscience." The case is as follows:

"I need not tell you the many persuasions and threatenings that hath been used to me for making me change Episcopal into Presbyterial Government, which absolutely to do, is so directly against my conscience, that by the grace of God no misery shall ever make me: but I hold myself obliged by all honest means to eschew the mischief of this too visible storm, and I think some kind of compliance with the iniquity of the times may be fit, as my case is, which at another time were unlawful. These are the grounds that have made me think of this inclosed proposition, the which, as one way it looks handsome to us, so in another I am fearful least I cannot make it with a safe conscience; of which I command you to give me your opinion upon your allegiance; conjuring you, that you will deal plainly and freely with me, as you will answer it at the dreadful Day of Judgment.

"I conceive the question to be, whether I may, with a safe conscience, give way to this proposed temporary compliance, with a resolution to recover and maintain that doctrine and discipline wherein I have been bred. The duty of my Oath is