c quarrel between
Mr. Snell and Mr. Clark. This quarrel about 'Standard Rules' ran so
high between them, that they could scarce forbear _scurrilous language_
therein, and a treatment of each other unbecoming _gentlemen_! Both
sides in this dispute had their abettors; and to say which had the most
truth and reason, _non nostrum est tantas componere lites_; perhaps
_both parties might be too fond of their own schemes_. They should have
left them to people to choose which they liked best." A candid
politician is our Massey, and a philosophical historian too; for he
winds up the whole story of this civil war by describing its result,
which happened as all such great controversies have ever closed. "Who
now-a-days takes those _Standard Rules_, either one or the other, for
their _guide_ in writing?" This is the finest lesson ever offered to the
furious heads of parties, and to all their men; let them meditate on the
nothingness of their "Standard Rules," by the fate of Mr. Snell.

It was to be expected, when once these writing-masters imagined that
they were artists, that they would be infected with those plague-spots
of genius--envy, detraction, and all the _jalousie du metier_. And such
to this hour we find them! An extraordinary scene of this nature has
long been exhibited in my neighbourhood, where two doughty champions of
the quill have been posting up libels in their windows respecting the
inventor of _a new art of writing_, the Carstairian, or the Lewisian?
When the great German philosopher asserted that he had discovered the
method of fluxions before Sir Isaac, and when the dispute grew so
violent that even the calm Newton sent a formal defiance in set terms,
and got even George the Second to try to arbitrate (who would rather
have undertaken a campaign), the method of fluxions was no more cleared
up than the present affair between our two heroes of the quill.

A recent instance of one of these egregious caligraphers may be told of
the late Tomkins. This vainest of writing-masters dreamed through life
that penmanship was one of the fine arts, and that a writing-master
should be seated with his peers in the Academy! He bequeathed to the
British Museum his _opus magnum_--a copy of Macklin's Bible, profusely
embellished with the most beautiful and varied decorations of his pen;
and as he conceived that both the workman and the work would alike be
darling objects with posterity, he left something immortal with the
legacy