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too much confidence in the name of the author. But having looked at the book which gave an account of it, and then having compared them with one another, he said to himself- This work of my friend, Sir John Carr, will not do for me: I will not buy it.' This is putting things to the test; this is exactly the use of criticism, which is preventing those who have not seen from buying bad books. His Lordship, a man of erudition, a friend to the author too, and partial to his subject, thought the book not worth buying, and thus he has shewn us the utility of criticism. Whoever sends into the world a book, gives to the public a right of dealing with the contents of that book as the contents deserve. If the book be a work of genuine merit, no attack upon it, however violat, or however ingenious, can do it any permanent injury. If, on the other hand, it be a work which has for its support nothing but knighthood, a large margin, hot press, gilt leaves, and morocco binding, it really never can stand the test of criticism; and the sooner it is sent into the shades the better. The public are indebted to the critic who so disposes of it: for the public have an interest in the discouragement of bad books, almost as much as in the encouragement of good ones. It has another good effect: It shews those who have not, otherwise, the means of discovering the true character of a book, how to save their money. Such is the effect of genuine criticism, and a very valuable thing it is to the public."

Lord Ellenborough's summing up is full of discrimination and sound sense, confirining what Sir Vicary Gibbs had said of Lord M.'s deposition.

«Indeed, says he, “it (My P. B.) does not appear to have done any material injury, as appears from the opinion of my Lord Mountnorris, who considered the criticism so extremely clever, that after having read it, and the work to which it referred, chapter by chapter, he says, I should have bought the one, but for the other;' which is equivalent to his having said, that he thought the volume, to which the criticism referred, not worth buying."

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This Trial will be read with great interest, and its issue must meet with universal approbation. Another edition has appeared, which is not, it seems, by any means so perfect as this, whose Advertisement states, that in the other REPORT are numerous typographical errors, a false date to the Trial, and some omissions, particularly the replies made to the Earl of Mountnorris and Sir Richard Phillips by the author of My Pocket Book.' In the present work there is only one omission, and that is a note, which has, by some strange accident, crept into page 54 of the Report printed by Mr. Gillet, Printer to Sir Richard Phillips. Its object is to attack with vulgar obloquy the Attorney General for his ingenuous remarks on the evidence, and to panegyrize, in the most fulsome manner, the

life and behaviour of Sir Richard Phillips. The former was deemed wholly unjust to the honourable character of the Attorney-General, and the latter was suppressed out of delicacy to Sir Richard Phillips, who is said, in his Memoir, p. 5, to be known to nauseate an adulatory dish."

The suppression of these replies was certainly very unfair. The answer to the noble Earl is in a happy strain of irony and pleasantry; that touching Sir R. Phillips is more serious, but not without some agreeable spice. We think it just to give it eirculation.

Letter from the Author of "My Pocket Book" to Mr. Cobbett. "Sir,

"THE licentiousness' of the pen of Sir Richard Phillips, in your last Register, ought not perhaps to excite any other emotion than contempt;' but as the greatest fool that ever trod the earth' (to borrow a description from the Attorney General, confirmed by my Lord Ellenborough) may, in the very prevailing party of which he is the towering head, find some congenial souls, ‹Asinus asino, et sus sui pulcher,' to admire his wisdom, and to believe his assertions, I am compelled to ask you for a corner in which I may stand to make my defence. You have ably vindicated the right of freewen to speak the truth, and you will, of course, be the last man to deny any one that honourable privilege-honourable I call it, notwithstanding the meed which legal wisdom has prepared for those who exercise it in our enlightened day!--I was present when Sir Richard Phillips, in his court dress, stood uninvited on the bench, and bore witness against his neighbour, i. e. brother bookseller, and I appeal to every one present whether they ever saw malignity so overshoot itself; but it had its reward. No one in the pillory (for speaking the truth or any other crime) would, I think, since the custom of lending an ear to justice has fallen into disuse, have changed elevations with him. The severe remarks of the Chief Justice, and the poignant animadversions of the Attorney General, are well remembered by Sir Richard; but the cause which warranted them has, it seems, wholly escaped him. He uttered no childish things,' to use his gentle terms! With this fact, I beg to couple his assertion, that he never read any anonymous criticisms, or cared any thing about them; and to add, that before me, at this moment, I have letters written by Sir Richard to a proprietor of a work, in which there is an anonymous review of books, and these letters complain piteously of the censure which is there passed on some of his publications, and request a friendly corference with this gentleman on the subject. This being the case in one instance, perhaps we may say, ex uno disce.' Latin again! I beg pardon, Mr. Cobbett--but one slice is enough: we need not eat the

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* See Mr. Bewick's unanswered and unanswerable letter, in Cobbett's Pol. Reg. Sept. 3.

whole of a goose to know that it is not sweet!-The principal object of my letter yet remains to be stated: You must be too well acquainted with the artifices practised by anonymous writers, to be surprised at learning, that the report of the late trial between Carr and Hood, copied from a newspaper into your last Register, was written by the very person whose pamphlet had been the object of that trial. Hence you may readily account for the inconsistencies of which the plaintiff and his witnesses are by this reporter made guilty!'-These are the words of Sir Richard Phillips in your Register. Now, on the honour of a gentleman, and as I value my last hopes, I never reported, or influenced the report, of the trial in any newspaper, or in any shape whatever: and as I have at no time been suspected by an attorney general (not much given to jesting) to have slipped in my testimony,' I trust that I shall, at least on this occasion, have the preference due to my solemn asseveration.

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"August 8, 1808.

"I am, &c. &c.

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THE AUTHOR OF MY POCKET Book.'

"P.S. As to the respectable character of Sir John Carr,' domestically speaking, I am as ready to believe it to be such as Sir Richard is to tell me so; but I need not inform Mr. Cobbett, that 'quand on parle d'ouvrages d'esprit il ne s'agit point d'honnêtes homines, mais de gens de bon sens.-A calf may be a very worthy calf-aye, and make a very good knight; but I have reason to believe that he would make a very sorry writer of travels, bookseller, or sheriff.”

The preceding just and pointed remarks on Sir Richard's letter, as far as they relate to the trial, are perfectly satisfactory. But we should not discharge our duty to the public, a duty now justly defined and duly appreciated by the Lord Chief Justice and his Majesty's Attorney General, did we pass in silence the calumnious charges against all reviews, which at the same time this accusateur public swears he never read! The noble rebuke of Lord Ellenborough, on summing up the evidence to the jury, should have taught him somewhat more discretion, if it could not impress him with more correct notions of justice. "It would be unfair in me," said his Lordship, "to censure what I have not read, like the Sheriff. God forbid I should do so!" The knight however, declares, but not upon oath, "I am a friend to criticism and to the unrestrained publication of it!!" How does this friendship appear? Is it a proof of friendship to criticism, and to the free publication of it, to attempt to silence it by an appeal to the laws? Can it be from pure attachment to criticism, that it is wished to violate the modesty of genius," by rendering it unlawful not to subjoin the signature of Phillip Richards, alias Richard Phillips, alias any other name which the critic may chuse te

adopt? Is it a proof of respect for criticism to pour forth a torrent of virulent abuse indiscriminately on all critical works, of which, could we believe his oath, he knows nothing? "Still," says Richard, "I do not object to the free publication of such (anonymous) criticisms, manufactured, as they generally are, under the direction of some interested bookseller." Interested bookseller! Bon M. Sherif! this is your attachment to criticism. Here, however, the abuse is avowed; but the Monthly Magazine, and "the Picture of London," contain much "anonymous scurrility" and gross calumnies against all the critical publications in the united kingdom. But let us hear the kaight himself: "availing themselves of this concealment, it is well known to those who have been behind the scenes [here the be-knighted author speaks from personal experience] during the getting up of an anonymous review, that books are commonly reviewed by authors themselves [as witness the Oxford Review and the Bloomsbury Physician] by rival authors in the same branch of literature, by the personal enemy of the author, or by the most corrupt and ignorant scribblers, [the knight's own toad-eaters and miserable dependants we must presume.] Every man of letters, and every person acquainted with the details of literature [the advantages of a sujet donné, and the manufacture of books, like the Travels in Spain"] will thank me for thus exposing a craft, the practices of which are as disgraceful and as pernicious as those of advertising money-lenders [or of dealers in accommodation bills?1 The craft may furiously assail me in return, but the cause I advocate is the cause of truth, science, and literature! And convinced as I am, that the abuse of the critical art, arising out of the concealment of the crities, has discouraged and blighted the genius of the country! baffled the cause of truth [the religious and political principles of citizen Tom Paine?] and obstructed the progress of science!!!" Enough, Sir Richard: the trial before us, which we most sincerely hope will be carefully preserved in the library of every elector and respectable citizen in the united kingdom, as a memorable example of the superiority of English jurisprudence, is alone sufficient to prove how far you are an "advocate for the cause of truth, science, and literature." Is it a proof of respect for truth in a man to swear that he never reads reviews, yet to produce an extract* from one (the Monthly) on an obscene book? The

See Monthly Magazine for August, p. 53, where the same indiscriminate abuse is heaped on all critical works, as what we have just quoted from the letter to Mr. Cobbett, dated August 4, where also Lord Ellenborough is falsely accused of confounding Milton with Locke, in the remarks of the latter on the principles of Filmer.

very acquaintance with such a work, which has long been justly condemned by the laws, testifies a vicious mind. Is it, we might again ask, consistent with the assumed character of an advocate for science, to have "cut up" Chaptal's Chemie appliquée aux Arts, and given it not only in sheets but even in leaves to a horde of "the most ignorant and corrupt scribblers," to be "done into English," but in fact to be rendered an unintelligible chaos of words, neither French nor English? Would any man, really a friend to science and literature, have introduced that dishonourable practice of rival translations among booksellers, by which means the public have been so abused, that translations are no longer saleable? Lastly, would any friend to literature attempt to abolish the British liberty of the press; wish to extirpate that greatest of all stimulations to literary study and general reading, monthly anonymous criticism; or seek to degrade literary men into sneaking sycophants, base parasites, and vile panders, administering to the atrocious passions of the ambitious or the brutal appetites of the voluptuaus? No! whoever attempts such, is " a traitor to the cause of free discussion," a "ruthless despot, who most fears that which he most wishes to repress." One word more respecting anonymous criticism. France presents a striking example of critics (no! we shall not abuse so venerable a term, we should say sycophants; for that country has not latterly been blessed with critics or reviews) who sign their names to their accounts of books. There is not honesty enough in France to support one anonymous publication purely critical. What is the consequence? why, that in the United Kingdom, although it contains only two-thirds of the population of modern France, there are more books sold in one month than in the whole French empire in a year! So much for Sir Richard's plan of nominal criticism. As to the "craft furiously assailing" him, we confess we are unacquainted with such characters; but we would not be so rude, neither are we so sceptical, as to doubt the truth of the knight's statement of what he himself knows to be fact, especially when he speaks of " the vile practices of hireling traders in literary criticism," his own acquaintance, friends, and dependants; we do therefore implicitly believe him, that his expiring "Medical Journal," the half-yearly anonymous criticisms (alias puffs) in the Monthly Magazine, (which the Attorney General appears not to have recollected) the "Oxford Review," and "Public Characters," are really the productions of " most corrupt and ignorant scribblers."

In the preceding remarks, which relate solely to literature considered as it immediately affects the moral and political character of states, we have strictly adhered to the just and acute

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