WE have found it absolutely necessary to issue a Special
Com- mission for the immediate trial of the merits of the vast number of new works that have been accumulating in crowds upon our walls and on our-table. We are now sitting at a solemn Literary Assize, holden in this our Library; and shall not quit the judgment-seat until we have pronounced a general gaol-delivery.. We are friends to the abolition of the punishment of death ; and shall therefore leave no unhappy author for execution. A writermay at least claim the benefit of clergy,—all save Mr. Howirr, the Quaker, who, for his work on Priestcraft, must expect to be mildly roasted at a slow fire. We shall get some fagots and brimstone ready, and try if we cannot do him justice next week. He has staked his existence on this tremendous attack on the churches of all nations, and must expect to be put to the question, and then be handed over to the civil power. Does his spirit not already quake within him? will lie not prove a Trembleur in frame as well as name? Had he no fear of the British Magazine before his eyes ? _ Other works we shall instantly put out of their misery. The worst crimes in our calender are punished by the trunkmaker: he is our literary Jack Ketch : lie hangs the sides of his coffers with the bodies of literary delinquents. Some we brand with a sen- tence: some we condemn in the same manner to be pilloried, alias paragraphed, by their own publishers, for a fortnight together in the columns of the Morning and Evening Journals. Early and late shall our opinion be proclaimed on 'Change and in the market- place—horrid fate ! Transportation is a rare thing : we have be- fore us a lot of poetical criminals who we firmly believe committed their offence for the sole object of either transporting themselves or others—all have failed, save our poor recreant friend HARTLEY CO LERI DGE, whom we have determined to imprison for life on one of our strongest shelves. We ought to give him a fair trial, and make our sentence known at length ; but the Quarterly Review caught him just as he was coming into our jurisdiction, and has anticipated us for once in settling the fate of a prisoner at the bar of criticism.
If it should be found that, after all our labours, any unhappy culprit lingers within the walls of our gaol, he must petition the Court.
Previous page
