s too popular and
trivial for the learned, and too abstruse and plodding for the
multitude. The preface is not English, nor yet Scotch or Irish. It must
have been written by Lady Morgan. In the body of the volume, there is
not _one_ new nor curious article, unless it be Lady Hood's "Tiger
Hunt." In your Mechanics there is a miserable want of information, and
in your Statistics there is a sad superabundance of American hyperbole
and dulness mixed together, like the mud and gunpowder which, when a
boy, I used to mix together to make a fizz. Your Poetry is so bad that I
look upon it as your personal kindness to me that you did not put my
lines under that head. Your criticism on Painting begins by calling
West's very pale horse "an extraordinary effort of human _genius_." Your
criticism on Sculpture begins by applauding _beforehand_ Mr. Wyatt's
_impudent_ cenotaph. Your criticism on the Theatre begins by
_denouncing_ the best production of its kind, 'The Beggar's Opera.' Your
article on Engraving puts under the head of Italy a stone drawing made
in Paris. Your own engraving of the Polar Regions is confused and dirty;
and your article on the Polar Seas sets out with the assertion of a fact
of which I was profoundly ignorant, namely, that the Physical
Constitution of the Globe is subject to _constant changes_ and
revolution. Of _constant changes_ I never heard, except in one of
Congreve's plays, in which the fair sex is accused of _constant
inconstancy_; but suppose that for _constant_ you read _frequent_. I
should wish you, for my own particular information, to add in a note a
few instances of the Physical Changes in the Constitution of the Globe,
which have occurred since the year 1781, in which I happened to be born.
I know of none, and I should be sorry to go out of the world ignorant of
what has passed in my own time. You send me your proof "for my boldest
criticism." I have hurried over rather than read through the pages, and
I give you honestly, and as plainly as an infamous pen (the same, I
presume, which drew your polar chart) will permit, my hasty impression.
If you will call here to-morrow between twelve and one, I will talk with
you on the subject.

Yours,

J.W.C.

The project was eventually abandoned. Murray entered into the
arrangement, already described, with Blackwood, of the _Edinburgh
Magazine_. The article on the "Polar Ice" was inserted in the
_Quarterly_.

Towards the end of 1818, Mr. Crabbe called