Note 12 — Chapter V · “HEARING MY COUNTRY ATTACKED, I BECAME HER DEFENDER THROUGH THICK AND THIN.”

“A Rub from Snub; or, a Cursory Analytical Epistle; addressed to Peter Porcupine, author of the Bone to Gnaw, Kick for a Bite, &c., &c. Containing Glad Tidings for the Democrats, and a word of comfort to Mrs. S. Rowson, wherein the said Porcupine’s moral, political, critical, and literary character is fully illustrated.” (Philadelphia, 1795.) Here is a little specimen of the style:—“Nature must have had the hysterics when you were born; mastiffs howled, and owls sang anthems to congratulate you into existence, and your jaws must have been furnished with indissoluble tusks expressive of the disposition that was inspired within you.”

Mrs. Rowson was an English emigrant, who had arrived in Philadelphia in 1793, and soon blazed forth as an actress and novelist, and enjoyed great popularity. One of her novels is still reprinted. Cobbett had made a review of the “roma-drama-poetic works of Mrs. S. Rowson” the object of some humour in “A Kick for a Bite.”