rgh Reviewer.

I have no doubt the Reviewer will most positively deny that Miss
Martineau had any thing to do with the Review of my work: that of
course. With his permission, I will relate a little anecdote. "When
the Royal George went down at Spithead, an old gentleman, who had a son
on board, was bewailing his loss. His friends came to console him. `I
thought,' observed one of them, `that you had received a
letter?'--`Yes,' replied the old gentleman, `but it was from _Jack
himself_.'--`Well, what more would you have?'--`Ah,' replied the old
gentleman, `had it been from the captain, or from one of his messmates,
or, indeed, from anybody else, it would have consoled me; but Jack,--he
is such _an incorrigible liar_, that his _very assertion_ that he is
safe, convinces me that he has gone to the bottom.'"

Now my opinion of the veracity of the Edinburgh Review may be estimated
by the above anecdote; the very circumstance of its denial would, with
me, be sufficient to establish the fact. But to proceed.

The Review has pronounced the first portion of my work to be light and
trifling, and full of errors; it asserts that I have been hoaxed by the
Americans; that I am incapable of sound reasoning; cannot estimate human
nature; and, finally, requests as a favour that I will write no more.
Such are the general heads of the Review.

Now here we have a strange inconsistency, for why should the Edinburgh
Review, if the work be really what he asserts it to be, "light and
trifling," etcetera, waste so much powder and shot upon a tomtit? Why
has he dedicated twenty-seven pages of ponderous verbosity to so light
and trifling a work? How seldom is it that the pages of the Quarterly
or Edinburgh condescend to notice even the very best of light
literature! Do they not, in their majesty, consider it _infra dig_. to
review such works, and have not two or three pages bestowed upon them
been considered as an immense favour on their part, and a high
compliment to the authors? Notwithstanding which, we have here
_twenty-seven pages of virulent attack_ upon my light and trifling work.
Does not the Edinburgh reviewer at once shew that the work is not light
and trifling? does he not contradict his own assertions, by the labour
and space bestowed upon it? nay, more, is it not strange that he should
think it necessary to take the unfair advantage of reviewing a work
before it is half finished, and pounce upon the first portion, with the