Note 16 — NO. III.—FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1807

The “Weekly Inspector,” here alluded to, was a neatly printed octavo journal, chiefly political, conducted by Thomas Green Fessenden. It was commenced Aug. 30, 1806, and was published in New York by Ezra Sargent, 39 Wall Street, with the motto from Hamilton: “Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greater number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people—commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”

Feb. 7, 1807, a fortnight after its publication, Fessenden notices Salmagundi, a “new literary publication,” with an opening fling or two at the club of wits who profess themselves supremely indifferent to the reception of their work. In the next number but one of the “Inspector” the attack is followed up by an article—“Salmagundi—alias Bubble and Squeak—again.” In reply to the notice of the former which had appeared in the interim in Salmagundi, Christopher Caustic raves in his extraordinary slang at these “frothy productions.” “The disease,” he says, “is becoming epidemic, the fever rising to frenzy, spreading from fool to fool; a numberless number of nameless names have already caught the infection, and from one end of the town to the other, all is nonsense and ‘Salmagundi.’” He calls it “a mere hodge-podge of train oil and garlic, instead of ‘Salmagundi.’... 69This is, in English, a ‘gibe cat,’ smothered in onions and eaten with fennel, rue, and caraway seed. In fact, there was one Huddesford, an English wit, who wrote a poem with that are title, which this worst of wizards may have purloined in some of their rambles, and thus gained a legal claim to the wit it contains.” He proposes, to his own great delight, “Silly-kickaby” as a substitute for “Salmagundi.” Having dispatched ‘Salmagundi’ or Silly-kickaby, we come next to ‘Whimwhams and Opinions.’ What a broken-backed metaphor! It is as bad as to have christened your nonsense Apple Dumpling; or Flights of Fancy.

‘Atque idem jungat vulpes

Et mulgeat hircos’—

That is, in English:—

This sorry set of silly shoats,

Should be employed to milk he-goats,

Or sent to Carolina bogs,

To yoke ox-teams of prairie dogs.

‘Whimwhams’ is taken by this junto of notables from an English publication. Launcelot Langstaff is a vile daub of a caricature of Isaac Bickerstaff. Will Honeycomb sat for Anthony Evergreen; Will Wizard’s original may be found in the British classics; and in short, the prototype of every other character, with the exception of a few scurrilous personalities. The work ought to have been styled Silly-kickaby, alias Tag-locks of common English Publications, compiled by Dunderpate, Doughhead, Dumpling and Co., published by Peter Pettyman, sold at the sign of the Ditch delving driveller, Caughnawaugher Slip, dedicated, and to be devoted, to a certain goddess. The Doctor ends with abusing the metre of Pindar Cockloft, and then asserting that it was stolen from “Dr. Caustic’s nick-nackatory.”

We shall see in a future number how the Doctor’s literary billingsgate was followed up in Salmagundi. The “Weekly Inspector” replies in the small shot of a handful of “squibs” in his number for March 6, leveled at “the lilliputian journal,” alluding to the small page of the original edition of Salmagundi, and the war dies out.

70The “Inspector” makes his exit at the close of his second volume, Aug. 22, 1807.

These mutual random hits and editorial discourtesies of a type too common in the annals of literature—these quarrels of authors—should be remembered for what they were, the passing nonsense of the hour. Thomas Green Fessenden, notwithstanding this nonsensical raving, was a man of mark and merit—not only of humor and spirit in the comic verses with which he enlivened the newspaper discussions of his day, but to be held in memory for his more sober labors in the cause of agriculture. There is a very pleasing reminiscence of his later years—he died at the age of sixty-six in 1837—by Nathaniel Hawthorne, in which he celebrates “the amiable temper and abstracted habits” of his old friend.