e as Bryant should possess an imagination teeming with
beautiful poetical images astonishes me; one would as soon expect to
extract drops of honey from the fangs of the rattlesnake."

But this was kindly tolerance compared to his attitude towards the elder
Bennett. The latter apparently came under Hone's notice in January,
1836, and the first mention in the Diary reads: "There is an
ill-looking, squinting man called Bennett, formerly connected with Webb
in the publication of his paper, who is now editor of the _Herald_, one
of the penny papers which are hawked about the streets by a gang of
troublesome, ragged boys, and in which scandal is retailed to all who
delight in it, at that moderate price. This man and Webb are now bitter
enemies, and it was nuts for Bennett to be the organ of Mr. Lynch's late
vituperative attack upon Webb, which Bennett introduced in his paper
with evident marks of savage exultation." To that famous masked ball
given by the Brevoorts on the evening of February 24, 1840, in their
house at Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue Hone went attired as Cardinal
Wolsey. He forgot to tell of the romance of the night, the elopement of
Miss Barclay and young Burgwyne, devoting his space to the expression of
his resentment over the presence at the affair of an emissary of
Bennett. "Whether the notice they" (the guests) "took of him" (the
"Herald" reporter), "and that which they extend to Bennett when he shows
his ugly face in Wall Street, may be considered approbatory of the
dirty slanders and unblushing impudence of the paper they conduct, or is
intended to purchase their forbearance towards themselves, the effect is
equally mischievous." Again, date of June 2, 1840: "The punishment of
the law adds to the fellow's notoriety, and personal chastisement is
pollution to him who undertakes it. Write him down, make respectable
people withdraw their support from the vile sheet, so that it will be
considered disgraceful to read it, and the serpent will be rendered
harmless." In the entry of February 14, 1842, Bennett is: "The impudent
disturber of the public peace, whose infamous paper, the _Herald_, is
more scurrilous, and of course more generally read, than any other."
September 2, 1843, Hone records that: "Bennett, the editor of the
_Herald_, is on a tour through Great Britain, whence he furnishes lies
and scandal for the infamous paper which has contributed so much to
corrupt the morals and degrade the taste of the pe