uite right in denying all
knowledge of the transaction. If charges of this nefarious
description are to go forth, sanctioned by all the solemnity of
circumstance, and guaranteed by the veracity of verse (as
Counsellor Phillips would say), what is to become of readers
hitherto implicitly confident in the not less veracious prose of
our critical journals? what is to become of the reviews; and, if
the reviews fail, what is to become of the editors? It is common
cause, and you have done well to sound the alarm. I myself, in my
humble sphere, will be one of your echoes. In the words of the
tragedian Liston, 'I love a row,' and you seem justly determined to
make one.

"It is barely possible, certainly improbable, that the writer might
have been in jest; but this only aggravates his crime. A joke, the
proverb says, 'breaks no bones;' but it may break a bookseller, or
it may be the cause of bones being broken. The jest is but a bad
one at the best for the author, and might have been a still worse
one for you, if your copious contradiction did not certify to all
whom it may concern your own indignant innocence, and the
immaculate purity of the British Review. I do not doubt your word,
my dear R----ts, yet I cannot help wishing that, in a case of such
vital importance, it had assumed the more substantial shape of an
affidavit sworn before the Lord Mayor Atkins, who readily receives
any deposition; and doubtless would have brought it in some way as
evidence of the designs of the Reformers to set fire to London, at
the same time that he himself meditates the same good office
towards the river Thames.

"I recollect hearing, soon after the publication, this subject
discussed at the tea-table of Mr. * * * the poet,--and Mrs. and the
Misses * * * * * being in a corner of the room perusing the proof
sheets of Mr. * * *'s poems, the male part of the _conversazione_
were at liberty to make some observations on the poem and passage
in question, and there was a difference of opinion. Some thought
the allusion was to the 'British Critic;' others, that by the
expression 'My Grandmother's Review,' it was intimated that 'my
grandmother' was not the reader of the review, but actually the
writer; thereby insinuating, my dear Mr. R----ts, that you were an
old woma