slovenly ease of the
real ones. Never, like "The Inspector," flamed such a
provoking prodigy in the cloudy skies of Grub-street; and
Hill seems studiously to have mortified his luckless rivals
by a perpetual embroidery of his adventures in the "Walks
at Marybone," the "Rotunda at Ranelagh," spangled over with
"my domestics," and "my equipage." [One of his adventures
at Ranelagh was sufficiently unfortunate to obtain for him the
unenviable notoriety of a caricature print representing him
enduring a castigation at the Rotunda gate from an Irish
gentleman named Brown, with whose character he had made
far too free in one of his "Inspectors." Hill showed much
pusillanimity in the affair, took to his bed, and gave out
that the whole thing was a conspiracy to murder him. This
occasioned the publication of another print, in which he
is represented in bed, surrounded by medical men, who treat
him with very little respect. One insists on his fee, because
Hill has never been acknowledged as one of themselves; and
another, to his plea of want of money, responds, "Sell your
sword, it is only an encumbrance."]

[288] It is useful to remind the public that they are often played
upon in this manner by the artifices of _political writers_.
We have observed symptoms of this deception practised at
present. It is an old trick of the craft, and was greatly used
at a time when the nation seemed maddened with political
factions. In a pamphlet of "A View of London and Westminster,
or the Town-spy," 1725, I find this account:--"The _seeming
quarrel_, formerly, between _Mist's Journal_ and the _Flying
Post_ was _secretly concerted_ between themselves, in order to
decoy the eyes of all the parties on both their papers; and
the project succeeded beyond all expectation; for I have been
told that the former narrowly missed getting an estate by
it."--p. 32.

[289] Isaac Reed, in his "Repository of Fugitive Pieces of Wit and
Humour," vol. iv., in republishing "The Hilliad," has
judiciously preserved the offending "Impertinent" and the
abjuring "Inspector." The style of "The Impertinent" is
volatile and poignant. His four classes of authors are not
without humou