s a light scandalous chronicle all the week, with a
seventh-day sermon. His utter contempt for the genius of his
contemporaries, and the bold conceit of his own, often rendered the
motley pages amusing. _The Inspector_ became, indeed, the instrument
of his own martyrdom; but his impudence looked like magnanimity; for
he endured, with undiminished spirit, the most biting satires, the
most wounding epigrams, and more palpable castigations.[287] His vein
of pleasantry ran more freely in his attacks on the Royal Society than
in his other literary quarrels. When Hill had not to banter ridiculous
experimentalists, but to encounter wits, his reluctant spirit soon
bowed its head. Suddenly even his pertness loses its vivacity; he
becomes drowsy with dulness, and, conscious of the dubiousness of his
own cause, he skulks away terrified: he felt that the mask of quackery
and impudence which he usually wore was to be pulled off by the hands
now extended against him.

A humorous warfare of wit opened between Fielding, in his _Covent-Garden
Journal_, and Hill, in his _Inspector_. _The Inspector_ had made the
famous lion's head, at the Bedford, which the genius of Addison and
Steele had once animated, the receptacle of his wit; and the wits
asserted, of this now _inutile lignum_, that it was reduced to a mere
state of _blockheadism_. Fielding occasionally gave a facetious
narrative of a paper war between the forces of Sir Alexander Drawcansir,
the literary hero of the _Covent-Garden Journal_, and the army of
Grub-street; it formed an occasional literary satire. Hill's lion, no
longer Addison's or Steele's, is not described without humour.
Drawcansir's "troops are kept in awe by a strange mixed monster, not
much unlike the famous chimera of old. For while some of our
Reconnoiterers tell us that this monster has the appearance of a lion,
others assure us that his ears are much longer than those of that
generous beast."

Hill ventured to notice this attack on his "blockhead;" and, as was
usual with him, had some secret history to season his defence with.

"The author of 'Amelia,' whom I have only once seen, told me, at that
accidental meeting, he held the present set of writers in the
utmost contempt; and that, in his character of Sir Alexander
Drawcansir, he should treat them in the most unmerciful manner. He
assured me he had always excepted me; and after honouring me with
some encomiums, he proceeded to mention a conduct which would