“Sir,
When next you stab a friend in the dark, if you wish to be unknown, hide your hand a little better than you have done in my case. But I have reason to suppose that you did not desire concealment, as I find it was commonly known that you were the author of the article in question. Indeed no one who knew your style, &c., could doubt for a moment. I never saw that article till last Saturday, and before I had read the first column I named the writer of it. It is not safe to attack one with whom you have been in the habit of conversing. He has too many keys.
When I recollect that it was written at the very time I was endeavouring to serve you, I must regard the action as a piece of the basest treachery and darkest malignity that can be conceived. I should not condescend to notice it, but that I required to inform you that I know you, and that our acquaintance is at an end. ‘I bide my time,’ and may yet repay you, but not by a stab in the dark.
I am, yours, &c., &c.,
Thomas Keightley.”
Following closely upon this letter came Mr. Keightley’s article in the Foreign Quarterly. It may be safe to conclude here—hoc ergo post propter hoc.
Panizzi, his temper already not unreasonably ruffled by the letter, appears to have been terribly put out by the Review. He winds up his own appeal to the proprietors of the “Foreign Quarterly” with a burst of indignation and menace, which, had it been carried into execution might have brought him into collision with the laws of his “adoptive country.”
Dreading and deprecating any such forcible expression of his ire by the outraged author, Mr. W. S. Rose sent him the poetical epistle which we subjoin.
“Brighton, April 15, 1835.
“My Wife and I are certain you are better