hich is rather
remarkable. Having sunk, one might suppose the journal was at an end,
for good and evil; and, especially, that all, who had been molested by
it, or held up to ridicule, might now calculate on rest. By no means:
First of all they made inquiries about the localities of my residence,
and the town nearest to my own family. Nothing was effected unless they
carried the insult, addressed to my family, into the knowledge of that
family and its circle. My cottage in Grasmere was just 280 miles from
London, and eighteen miles from any town whatsoever. The nearest was
Kendal; a place of perhaps 16,000 inhabitants; and the nearest
therefore, at which there were any newspapers printed. There were two:
one denominated _The Gazette_; the other _The Chronicle_. The first was
Tory and Conservative; had been so from its foundation; and was,
besides, generous in its treatment of private character. My own
contributions to it I will mention hereafter. _The Chronicle_, on the
other hand, was a violent reforming journal, and conducted in a
partisan spirit. To this newspaper the article was addressed; by this
newspaper it was published; and by this it was carried into my own
'_next-door_' neighbourhood. Next-door neighbourhood? But that surely
must be the very best direction these libellers could give to their
malice; for there, at least, the falsehood of their malice must be
notorious. Why, yes: and in that which _was_ my neighbourhood, according
to the most literal interpretation of the term, a greater favour could
not have been done me, nor a more laughable humiliation for my
unprovoked enemies. Commentary or refutation there needed none; the
utter falsehood of the main allegations were so obvious to every man,
woman, and child, that, of necessity, it discredited even those parts
which might, for any thing known to my neighbours, have been true. Nay,
it was the means of procuring for me a generous expression of sympathy,
that would else have been wanting; for some gentlemen of the
neighbourhood, who were but slightly known to me, put the malignant
journal into the fire at a public reading-room. So far was well; but, on
the other hand, in Kendal, a town nearly twenty miles distant, of
necessity I was but imperfectly known; and though there was a pretty
general expression of disgust at the character of the publication, and
the wanton malignity which it bore upon its front, since, true or not
true, no shadow of a reason was plead