WRITING UP THE "TIMES" NEWSPAPER.
Dr. Dibdin, in his Reminiscences, relates:—"Sir John Stoddart married the sister of Lord Moncrieff, by whom he has a goodly race of representatives; but, before his marriage, he was the man who wrote up the Times newspaper to its admitted pitch of distinction and superiority over every other contemporary journal. Mark, gentle reader, I speak of the Times newspaper during the eventful and appalling crisis of Bonaparte's invasion of Spain and destruction of Moscow. My friend fought with his pen as Wellington fought with his sword: but nothing like a tithe of the remuneration which was justly meted out to the hero of Waterloo befel the editor of the Times. Of course, I speak of remuneration in degree, and not in kind. The peace followed. Public curiosity lulled, and all great and stirring events having subsided, it was thought that a writer of less commanding talent, (certainly not the present Editor,) and therefore procurable at a less premium, would answer the current purposes of the day; and the retirement of Dr. Stoddart, (for he was at this time a civilian, and particularly noticed and patronised by Lord Stowell,) from the old Times, and his establishment of the New Times newspaper, followed in consequence. But the latter, from various causes, had only a short-lived existence. Sir John Stoddart had been his Majesty's advocate, or Attorney-General, at Malta, before he retired thither a second time, to assume the office of Judge."
RELICS OF THE BOAR'S HEAD TAVERN, EASTCHEAP.
The portal of the Boar's Head was originally decorated with carved oak figures of Falstaff and Prince Henry; and in 1834, the former figure was in the possession of a brazier, of Great Eastcheap, whose ancestors had lived in the shop he then occupied since the great fire. The last grand Shakspearean dinner-party took place at the Boar's Head about 1784. A boar's head, with silver tusks, which had been suspended in some room in the house, perhaps the Half Moon or Pomegranate, (see Henry IV., Act. ii., scene 3,) at the great fire, fell down with the ruins of the houses, little injured, and was conveyed to Whitechapel Mount, where it was identified and recovered about thirty years ago.
ORIGIN OF "THE EDINBURGH REVIEW."
The Edinburgh Review was first published in 1802. The plan was suggested by Sydney Smith, at a meeting of literati, in the fourth or fifth flat or story, in Buccleugh-place, Edinburgh, then the elevated lodging of Jeffrey. The motto humorously proposed for the new review by its projector was, "Tenui musam meditamur avena,"—i.e., "We cultivate literature upon a little oatmeal;" but this being too nearly the truth to be publicly acknowledged, the more grave dictum of "Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur" was adopted from Publius Syrus, of whom, Sydney Smith affirms, "None of us, I am sure, ever read a single line!" Lord Byron, in his fifth edition of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, refers to the reviewers as an "oat-fed phalanx."