Note 39 — Chapter VI

Prick Bull calf, etc.] We had not the least expectation that our notice of Doctor Costive, in the last number, would have put him into such an indecent passion. Bless us, how he has roared! and like Falstaff not only roared but “ran and roared”—

——“unpack’d his heart with words,

And fell a cursing—like a very drab!

A scullion!”

He has given us a most woful scolding through some eight or nine columns, and plainly proved that our work was not worth a fig, because “Salmagundi” had been heretofore given as a title to another work—Launcelot Langstaff was evidently copied from Isaac Bickerstaff, because they both ended with staff—“Whimwhams” was the same as “Flimflams”—“Will Wizard” was taken from—the Lord knows where; Wintry was accidentally misspelled or misprinted Wintery, and “Weakly” was borrowed from his own Weakly productions. O, Midas, Midas, how thine ears do loom through the fog of thy writings. When a man of the Doctor’s gumption can write nine columns against our work, and discover no greater faults, we may well be vain—were we to criticise our own writings, they would stand a much poorer chance. In spite of the Doctor’s crustiness we still love him in our hearts—he may scold like an old woman but we know 90it all arises from that excessive irritability common to all men who have “written a book,” and particularly a book of doggerel rhymes. We again assure him of our perfect good-will toward himself and his most amiable offspring, that delectable pair of twin brothers, Terrible Tractoration and Democracy Unveiled. May the whole world in general, and posterity in particular, know the proper distinction between Hudibrastic and Doggerel, and acquit the Doctor from the imputation meanly leveled against him by sundry nincoms of imitating Hudibras. We are sorry that he should ever have been thought capable of descending to be a copyist, and we challenge the whole world to deny that the Doctor’s verse is doggerel, genuine, broken-winded, rickety doggerel, whatever his enemies may insist to the contrary. The Doctor’s waggery, however, like that of many other double-headed wits, seems often to have been taken by the wrong end. On the first appearance of his Terrible Tractoration, the critics were absolutely at a loss, such was the delicacy of his wit, to say whether he was the champion or opponent of Perkinism. Thus the Critical Review for 1803: “His real object cannot always be ascertained—we think him, however, the friend of the Tractors.” Either the Doctor or the critic must have been a dunderhead—we charitably suppose the critic. The Doctor afterward, like “John-a-Gudgeon” in the Pleader’s Guide, explained, and his explanation proved so perfectly satisfactory that there were very few of the reviewers but could tell, or at least guess at his object. The fact was, the Doctor, good inoffensive soul, did not mean to attack anything—except common sense. We recommend this work as a soporific specimen of the Doctor’s skill in balderdash.