Dire is the wrath of the pamphleteer that he should have been charged by MR. SINGER with "want of truth." That gentleman doubtless saw what I did not, the implied insinuation—since burst into full flower—about a "coterie." Yet the candid controversialist, now, after due deliberation, insinuates that a "canon of criticism," which I ventured to suggest, and at which he now finds it convenient to sneer, was remembered for the purpose of "bolstering up" MR. SINGER'S "bad argument." So far from this being the case, he knows that I used MR. SINGER'S argument—at the close of, and apart from the main purpose of my letter, to illustrate mine. So, in another place, in the attempt to show up my "charming and off-hand modesty," he quotes my opinion that the meaning of "rack" might be "settled at once and for ever," suppressing the fact that I made the assertion with a view of "testing the correctness of my opinion that the question was not one of etymology, but of construction. In short, an adept in the use of those weapons which are of value only where victory seems a higher aim than truth, his honesty would appear to be upon a level with his taste.
I have now done with this gentleman. Of the importance of inquiries into nice verbal distinctions there might be a question, but that they sometimes furnish a clue to more valuable discoveries but for this fact I should little regard them. At all events, the remark about the difference "'twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee," comes with strange inconsistency from one who has written fifty-two pages with no other result than raising the question whether "bitter" was not "sour," and proving how both qualities may be combined in a truly "nauseous medicament."
SAMUEL HICKSON.
St. John's Wood.
[Our attention having, been directed by the preceding letter to Mr. Causton's pamphlet, we procured and read it, with feelings of deep pain, not for ourselves but for the writer. We are content to rest the justification of our conduct in abridging, or, as Mr. Causton terms it, "mutilating," that gentleman's communication, on the very passages which we omitted, and he has reprinted. Mr. Causton's pamphlet, written in defence of his literary reputation, proves that that reputation has no enemy so dangerous as himself. We may add that we propose next week publishing a summary of the evidence on both sides of this disputed question, written not by Mr. Causton nor Mr. Hickson, but by a correspondent who, like those gentlemen, is personally unknown to us.]
Minor Notes.
"Miserrimus."
—I have an extraordinary little volume, which, I am told, was written by Frederic Mansell Reynolds, who died in June, 1850, entitled, "Miserrimus. On a gravestone in Worcester Cathedral is this inscription, 'Miserrimus,' with neither name, date, nor comment. NOT PUBLISHED. Printed by Davison, Simmons, & Co., 1832," 12mo.
The work purports to be a sort of autobiography of a most miserable wretch, and we are left to suppose that his remains lie under the stone in question, for we are not furnished with any preface or introduction. Whether the author was aware of the name of the person over whom so singular an inscription was placed does not appear; but there is no reason to believe that the repulsive and painful aberrations he details had any relation to the individual buried under the memorial of "Miserrimus," whose name is recorded in Chambers's Biographical Illustrations of Worcestershire, p. 310., as the Rev. Thomas Morris, who was deprived of all ecclesiastical preferment for refusing to acknowledge the king's supremacy at the Revolution, and died, it is stated, in 1748, silvered over with the weight and infirmities of eighty-eight years—"Miserrimus."
F. R. A.