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North. James, that man never breathed, nor ever will breathe, for whose contributions to the Magazine I cared one single curse.

Shepherd. Oh, man, Mr North, dinna lose your temper, sir. What for do you get sae red in the face at a bit puir, harmless, silly joke, especially you that's sae wutty and sae severe yoursel, sae sarcastic and fu' o' satire, and at times (the love o' truth chirts' it out o' me) sae like a sleuth-hound, sae keen on the scent o' human bluid! Dear me! mony a luckless deevil, wi' but sma' provocation, or nane, Mr North, hae ye worried.

North. The Magazine, James, is the Magazine.

Shepherd. Is't really? I've nae mair to say, sir; that oracular response removes a' diffeeculties, and settles the hash o' the maitter, as Pierce Egan would say, at ance.

North. Nothing but the purest philanthropy could ever have induced me, my dearest Shepherd, to suffer any contributors to the Magazine; and I sometimes bitterly repent having ever departed from my original determination (long religiously adhered to), to write, proprio Marte, the entire miscellany.

Shepherd. A' the world kens that-but whaur's the harm o' a few gude, sober, steady, judicious, regular, weel-informed, versateele, and biddable contributors ?

North. None such are to be found on earth-You must look for them in heaven. Oh, James! you know not what it is to labour under a load of contributors! A prosy parson who, unknown to me, had, it seems, long worn a wig, and published an assize sermon, surprising me off my guard on a dull rainy day when the most vigilant of editors has fallen asleep, effects a footing in the Magazine. Oh what toil and trouble in dislodging the Doctor! The struggle may continue for years—and there have been instances of clerical contributors finally removed only by death. We remember rejecting all the Thirty-Nine Articles, before we could convince a rural Dean of our heterodoxy; but, thank heaven, the controversy, for our epistles were polemical, broke his heart. He was a parson of rare perseverance, and could never be brought to comprehend the meaning of that expression so largely illustrated during the course of our correspondence, "A rejected article." Back, in a wonderfully few days, the 1 Chirts-spurts.

2 The author of Boxiana.

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unrejectable article used to come, from a pleasant dwelling among trees, several hundred miles off, drawn by four horses, and guarded by a man in scarlet raiment, ever and anon blowing a horn.

Shepherd. Dog on't, ye wicket auld Lucifer, hoo your een sparkle as you touzle the clergy! You just mind me o' a lion purlin wi' inward satisfaction in his throat, and waggin his tufted tail ower a Hottentot lying atween his paws, aye preferring the flesh o' a blackamoor to that o' a white man.

North. I respect and love the clergy, James. You know that well enough, and the feeling is mutual. Or, suppose a young lawyer who has been in a case with Mr Scarlett or Serjeant Cross, in the exultation of his triumph indites an article for me, whom he henceforth familiarly calls Old Christopher, in presence of the block which, in his guinea-per-week lodging in Lancaster, his wig dignifies and adorns. Vapid is it as a would-be-impressive appeal of Courtnay's, in mitigation of damages.-Yet return it with polite and peremptory respect, and long ere the moon hath filled her horns, lo and behold there is again and again redelivered from the green mail-cart the self-same well-known parcel of twine-entwisted whitey-brown! The lawyer is a leech, and will adhere to a Magazine after you have cut him in two; but a little Attic salt, if you can get him to swallow it, makes him relax his hold, and takes the bite out of him, or so weakens his power of jaw that he can be easily shaken off, like a little sick reptile from the foot of a steed, which has been attacked unawares in passing a ford, but on feeling the turf beneath his hoofs, sets off in a thundering gallop, with red open nostrils, snuffing the east wind.

Shepherd. Or suppose that some shepherd, more silly than his sheep that roams in yon glen where Yarrow frae still St Mary's Loch rows wimplin to join the Ettrick, should lay down his cruick, and aneath the shadow o' a rock, or a ruin, indite a bit tale, in verse or prose, or in something between the twa, wi' here and there aiblins a touch o' nature—what is ower ower aften the fate o' his unpretendin contribution, Mr North? A cauld glint o' the ee-a curl o' the lip—a humph o' the voice-a shake o' the head-and then,-but the warld, wicked as it is, could never believe it,—a wave o' your haun,

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and instantly and for evermore is it swallowed up by the jaws of the Balaam-box, greedy as the grave, and hungry as Hades. Ca' ye that friendship-ca' ye that respec-ca' ye that sae muckle as the common humanity due to ane anither, frae a' men o' woman born, but which you, sir,-na, dinna frown and gnaw your lip-hae ower aften forgotten to show even to me, the Ettrick Shepherd, and the author o' the Queen's Wake.

North (much affected). What is the meaning of this, my dear, dear Shepherd? May the Magazine sink to the bottom of the Red Sea?

Shepherd. Dinna greet, sir,-oh! dinna, dinna greet! Forgie me for hurtin your feelins; and be assured, that frae my heart I forgie you, if ever you hae hurted mine. As for wushin the Magazine to sink to the bottom o' the Red Sea, that's no possible; for its lichter far than water, and sink it never wull till the laws o' Nature hersel undergo change and revolution. My only fear is, under the present constitution o' the elements, that ae month or ither Maga will flee ower the moon, and thenceforth, a comet, will be eccentric on her course, and come careering in sight o' the inhabitants o' the yearth, perhaps, only ance or twice before Neddy Irving's' Day o' Judg ment.

North. Then, James, imagine the miseries inflicted on me, an old grey-headed editor, by fat and fubzy Fellows of Colleges, who are obliged to sit upright in the act of an article, by protuberance of paunch-whose communication feels greasy to the touch, so fat is the style-and may be read in its oiliness, without obliteration during a thunder-shower!

Shepherd. They're what's ca'd Classical Scholars.

North. Intelligent naval officers are most formidable contributors. They have been known to take possession of a periodical by boarding. No way of getting rid of them but by blowing up the Magazine.

Shepherd. What! would ye quarrel wi' sic clever chiels as Captain Basil Ha', and Captain Pawrie, and Captain Lyon, and Captain Griffiths, and Captain Marryat, and a hunder ither naval heroes, gin ony o' them were to send you a sailing or a fechtin article, or an account o' soundings taen aff the roaring coast o' Labrador, or the wolf-howling Oonalashka, or 1 The Rev. Edward Irving, a popular preacher of the day. He died in 1834.

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ony ither rock-bound sea-shore, where that fierce auld heathen, Neptune, rampauges in faem and thunder, and lauchs to see the bit wee insignificant eighty-gun ships, or pechs' o' Fortyfours, dashed into flinders, like sae muckle spray, up and atower the precipices far ontil the dry land, where the cannibals are dancin round a fire, that they keep beetin wi' planks and spars o' the puir man-o'-war!

North. No, James. I would not run my head against any such Posts as those. But the few contributors I do cherish must be volunteers. And since such Dons of the Deck regularly read, but seldom write in Maga, all I can do is, to avail myself of their publications, and occasionally enrich Maga by a masterly review of a Voyage to Loo-Choo, or attempt to force the North-West Passage.

Shepherd. Do you get mony grautis articles?

North. I seldom pay for poetry. In cases of charity and courtesy-that is to say, of old women and young ones—my terms are, a shilling for a sonnet, a dollar for a dramatic scene, and for a single book of an epic, by way of specimen, why, I do not grudge a sovereign.

Shepherd. Heard ever onybody the like o' that? A book o' an epic poem, perhaps immortal, rated nae higher than a sheep fit for the butcher! Mr Tickler, what's the matter wi' you that you're no speakin? I howp you're no sick?

3

Tickler. I was thinking pensively, James, of the worthy old woman whom to-day we saw decently interred in Greyfriars' Churchyard; the ancient lady with the green gown, on whom the Shepherd was but too fond of playing off his gibes, his jeers, and his jokes. Peace to her ashes!

Shepherd. She was indeed, Mr Tickler, an honest auld body; and till she got into the natural dotage that is the doom o' a' flesh, she wasna wantin in smeddum, and could sing a sang, or tell a story, wi' nae sma' speerit. She was really an amusin chronicler o' the bygane times; and it was pleasant now and then, on a Saturday nicht, to tak a dish o' tea wi' her, and hearken to her clishmaclavers about the Forty-five. Her and me had never ony serious quarrel, and I'm proud to think she has left me a murnin ring.

Tickler. I shall not strip crape before Christmas, in token 1 Pechs-pigmies. 2 Howp-hope. 3 Constable's Magazine is meant.

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of my respect for her memory. It was affecting to see the seven young men as pall-bearers.1

Shepherd. Puir fallows! what'll become o' them noo? They maun hae recourse to the Dumfries Magazine.

North. Have ye no flowers, James, to wreath over her tomb?

Tickler. "Her memory "-in solemn silence.

Shepherd. Lend me your pocket-handketcher, Mr North. (The Shepherd weeps.)

North. It does one great good to see the flourishing condition of the Periodicals. Colburn has always some facetious town-articles; and although somewhat too exclusively adapted to the meridian of London, his Magazine is undoubtedly a pleasant miscellany. The very name of Campbell sheds a lambent lustre over its occasional dulness; and a single scrap of one of his Lectures on Poetry-such is my admiration of his delightful genius-redeems the character of a whole Number. Campbell is a fine critic, at once poetical and philosophical, full of feeling as of thought. The Prefaces to his Specimens are they not exquisite? The Smiths are clever men—but why is not Hazlitt kicked out of the concern?

Shepherd. 'Cause Cammel kens he's hungry.

North. That may be a very good reason for sending an occasional loaf or fish to his lodgins, with Mr Campbell's, or Mr Colburn's compliments; but it is a very bad one for suffering him to expose his nakedness periodically to the reading public.

Tickler. It does not seem to me, from his writings, that Hazlitt's body is much reduced. The exhaustion is of mind. His mind has the wind-colic. It is troubled with flatulency. Let him cram it with borrowed or stolen victuals, yet it gets no nourishment. It is fast dying of atrophy; and when it belches its last, will be found to be a mere skeleton.

North. I perceive he has lately assumed the character, in Colburn, of Boswell Redivivus. Why, Jemmy Boswell was a gentleman born and bred—a difficulty in the way of impersonation, which Billy Hazlitt can never, in his most sanguine moments, hope to overcome.

Tickler. Then Jemmy was in good society, and a member

1 See "The Pilgrimage to the Kirk of Shotts," Blackwood's Magazine, vol. v., p. 674.