I would have no impudent slanderer insinuate that I mean to bestow on the right honorable M. G. Lewis, M. P. any opprobrious epithet. No, gentlemen, I did not say monkey. The term which I use is an adjective, legitimately coined from the substantive Monk; and I affix it to this gentleman’s name as an honorary appellation, to which he is entitled, for having written that celebrated romance called The Monk. As to the Spanish Spectre, you will please to consult the romance aforesaid, and you will find a most horrible ballad, by which it appears that a certain Miss Imogene was carried off on her bridal night, if I mistake not, by the ghost of one Don Alonzo, to whom she had been betrothed, but proved false hearted. I would, however, caution against reading this doleful ditty by candle light, lest the story of
“The worms they crept in, and the worms they crept out,
And they sported his eyes and his temples about,”
might sport with the senses of the more timid reader.
To make above ground one d—d flurry!
I earnestly request that the learned college will not do me the injustice to suppose that a man of my delicacy and refined feelings would myself utter any phrase like the above, which has so much the semblance of profanity. But as this personage, before he passed that fatal “bourne” (from which one “traveller” has “returned”) had ever been accustomed, like most of our profession, to rhetorical flourishes of this kind, it must be expected that, on such an important occasion, he would express himself with all his wonted energy; and my veracity as a historian obliges me to give verbatim the speech which the sprite did in fact deliver.
And cannot pay NINETEEN POUNDS TEN”!!!
The terrible shock given not only to Mr Addington, but to the credit of the British nation, by this famous sally of that teasing, testy, querulous, alarming, honorable, cidevant member of the House of Commons, is undoubtedly fresh in the recollection of every person, who has the least smattering in parliamentary debates: and every true patriot and friend to the peace of —— our prime minister, will congratulate the country on the failure of Mr Robson’s election, as well as that of his co-operator, Mr Jones, into the new parliament.