judgment upon it so
severely as did the author himself, on reading it over nine years
after, when he had quitted England, never to return. The copy which he
then perused is now in possession of Mr. Murray, and the remarks which
he has scribbled over its pages are well worth transcribing. On the
first leaf we find--

"The binding of this volume is considerably too valuable for its
contents.

"Nothing but the consideration of its being the property of another
prevents me from consigning this miserable record of misplaced anger
and indiscriminate acrimony to the flames.

B."

Opposite the passage,

"to be misled
By Jeffrey's heart, or Lamb's Boeotian head,"

is written, "This was not just. Neither the heart nor the head of
these gentlemen are at all what they are here represented." Along the
whole of the severe verses against Mr. Wordsworth he has scrawled
"Unjust,"--and the same verdict is affixed to those against Mr.
Coleridge. On his unmeasured attack upon Mr. Bowles, the comment
is,--"Too savage all this on Bowles;" and down the margin of the page
containing the lines, "Health to immortal Jeffrey," &c. he
writes,--"Too ferocious--this is mere insanity;"--adding, on the
verses that follow ("Can none remember that eventful day?" &c.), "All
this is bad, because personal."

Sometimes, however, he shows a disposition to stand by his original
decisions. Thus, on the passage relating to a writer of certain
obscure Epics (v. 793.), he says,--"All right;" adding, of the same
person, "I saw some letters of this fellow to an unfortunate poetess,
whose productions (which the poor woman by no means thought vainly of)
he attacked so roughly and bitterly, that I could hardly regret
assailing him;--even were it unjust, which it is not; for, verily, he
_is_ an ass." On the strong lines, too (v. 953.), upon Clarke (a
writer in a magazine called the Satirist), he remarks,--"Right
enough,--this was well deserved and well laid on."

To the whole paragraph, beginning "Illustrious Holland," are affixed
the words "Bad enough;--and on mistaken grounds besides." The bitter
verses against Lord Carlisle he pronounces "Wrong also:--the
provocation was not sufficient to justify such acerbity;"--and of a
subsequent note respecting the same nobleman, he says, "Much too
savage, whatever the foundation may be." Of Rosa Matilda (v. 738.) he
tells us, "She has since married the Morning Post,--an exceeding good