Note 78 — A LETTER TO WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ.

Humanity stands as little in this author’s way as truth when his object is to please. It was in the same spirit of unmanly adulation that he struck at Mrs. Robinson’s lameness and ‘her crutches,’ with a hand, that ought to have been withered in the attempt by the lightning of public indignation and universal scorn. Mr. Sheridan once spoke of certain politicians in his day who ‘skulked behind the throne, and made use of the sceptre as a conductor to carry off the lightning of national indignation which threatened to consume them.’ There are certain small critics and poetasters who have always been trying to do the same thing.