e said,--and, grown with future vengeance big,
Grimly he shook his scientific wig.
To clinch the cause, and fuel add to fire,
Behind came Hamilton, his trusty squire:
Awhile _he_ paus'd, revolving the disgrace,
And gath'ring all the honours of his face;
Then rais'd his head, and, turning to the crowd,
Burst into bellowing, terrible and loud:--
'Hear my resolve; and first by--I swear,
By Smollet, and his gods, whoe'er shall date
With him this day for glorious fame to vie,
Sous'd in the bottom of the ditch shall lie;
And know, the world no other shall confess,
While I have crab-tree, life, or letter-press.'
Scar'd at the menace, _authors_ fearful grew,
Poor Virtue trembled, and e'en Vice look'd blue."

It is unnecessary to pursue this vapid composition to its most lame and
impotent conclusion; it is sufficient to cite it as a specimen-brick of
the hostility which many literary characters entertained against the
author of "Roderick Random." Despite his own birthplace being north of
the Tweed, many Scots were aggrieved at the incidental ridicule with
which characters from "the land o' cakes" are sometimes treated in that
and other works from the same hand; and the picture of Lismahago in
"Humphrey Clinker" is said to have still more violently inflamed their
ire. It is to this feeling on the part of his countrymen that Charles
Lamb alludes, in his essay upon "Imperfect Sympathies." "Speak of
Smollett as a great genius," he says, "and they [the Scots] will retort
upon Hume's History compared with _his_ continuation of it. What if the
historian had continued 'Humphrey Clinker'?" In fact, there were a good
many North Britons, a century ago, who seem to have felt, on the subject
of English censure or ridicule, pretty much as some of our own people do
to-day. No matter how well-founded the objection may be, or how justly
a local habit may be satirized, our sensitiveness is wounded and our
indignation aroused. That the portrait in Lismahago's case was not
altogether overcharged may be deduced from a passage in one of Walter
Scott's letters, in which he likens the behavior and appearance of one
of his oldest and most approved friends to that of the gallant Obadiah
in a similar critical moment. "The noble Captain Ferguson was married on
Monday last. I was present at the bridal, and I assure you the like
hath not been seen since the days of Lismahago. Like his prototype, the
Captain advanced in