excused seizing upon the nearest suspicious person, on the principle happily expressed by Claverhouse, in a letter to the Earl of Linlithgow. He had been, it seems, in search of a gifted weaver, who used to hold forth at Conventicles: "I sent to seek the webster (weaver), they brought in his brother for him: though he maybe cannot preach like his brother, I doubt not but he is as well principled as he, wherefore I thought it would be no great fault to give him the trouble to go to jail with the rest."

[About this time there had appeared a silly story in the American newspapers, of Sir Walter's brother, Thomas Scott, then with his regiment in Canada, having acknowledged himself to be the author of Waverley. There is much jesting on the subject in Sir Walter's correspondence with his brother.-See Introduction to Waverley, p. xxxiii.]

MISCELLANEOUS CRITICISM.

ARTICLE I.

ON THORNTON'S SPORTING TOUR.

[The Edinburgh Review for January, 1805, included this Article on "A Sporting Tour through the Northern Parts of England, and great Part of the Highlands of Scotland, including Remarks on English and Scottish Landscape, and General Observations on the State of Society and Manners. Embellished with Sixteen Engravings. By Colonel T. THORNTON, of Thornville-Royal in Yorkshire. London, 1804.”']

It is well known that the patriarch of Uz exclaimed, in the midst of his afflictions, “Oh that mine ad

1 [Lieutenant-Colonel Thornton (formerly of the West-York Militia) was the first sportsman of his day, in point of science, and one of the most convivial companions of the festive board. He revived falconry on a very extensive scale. After the peace of Amiens he went to France for the purpose of examining the state

This ardent excla

versary had written a book!" mation of the man of patience has led the learned Rabbin Menachem-el-Rekenet, in the treatise entitled Bâva Bâthra, to suggest that the Arabian sage may have been a writer in the Ammudeha Scibha (the Critical Journal of Tadmor), or at least in the Maarcoheth haelahuth (or Mokha Monthly Review). Without deciding on this difficult point, we can only say that we have frequently sympathized with the Eastern sufferer, and now rejoice that our enemy has written a book. Why we impute this hostile character to the author of the Sporting Tour before us, requires some explanation.

The Reviewers of North Britain, in common with the other inhabitants of the Scottish metropolis, enjoy some advantages unknown, it is believed, to their southern brethren. We do not allude merely to the purer air which we breathe in our attics, and the more active exercise which we enjoy in ascending to them, although our superiority in these

of sporting in that country. He was said to have been materially assisted in his publication by the Reverend Mr Martyne, and subsequently to his Sporting Tour in Scotland, there appeared, under the colonel's name, A Sporting Tour through various parts of France in 1802, 2 vols. 4to, 1806. And A Vindi. cation of Colonel Thornton's conduct in his Transactions with Mr Burton. Having been obliged to relinquish residence on his magnificent estate in Yorkshire, he spent the latter years of his life entirely at Paris, where he established a weekly dinner party, under the name of the Falconers' Club. For some months his health was visibly on the decline, yet he would lie in bed until the hour of five, then rise and go to the club, sing a better song, and tell a better story, than any of the other members. He died at Paris in 1823.]

respects is well known to be in the proportion of fourteen stories to three. But we pride ourselves chiefly in this circumstance, that though "in populous city pent" for eight months in the year, the happy return of August turns the Reviewers, with the schoolboys, and even the Burghers of Edinburgh, adrift through the country, to seek among moors and lakes, not indeed whom but what they may devour: For some of us do (under Colonel Thornton's correction) know where to find a bit of game. On such occasions, even the most saturnine of our number has descended from his den gar nished with the limbs of mangled authors, wiped his spectacles, adjusted his knapsack, and exchanged the critical scalping knife for the fishing-rod or fowling-piece. But we are doomed to travel in a style (to use the appropriate expression) far different from that of our worthy author. Having in our retinue nothing either to bribe kindness, or to impose respect having neither two boats nor a sloop to travel by sea, nor a gig, two baggagewaggons, and God knows how many horses, for the land service-having neither draughtsman nor falconer, Jonas nor Lawson, groom nor boy-having in our suite neither Conqueror nor Plato, nor Dragon, nor Sampson, nor Death, nor the Devilabove all, having neither crowns and half crowns to grease the fists of gamekeepers and foresters, nor lime punch, incomparable Calvert's porter, flasks of champagne, and magnums of claret' to

All which Colonel Thornton says he had. In our mind, he should have given God thanks, and made no boast of them.

2

propitiate their superiors ;-in fine, being accoutred in a rusty black coat, and attended by a pointer which might have belonged to the pack of the frugal Mr Osbaldeston,1 being moreover "Lord of our presence but no land beside," we have in our sporting tours met with interruptions of a nature more disagreeable than we choose to mention. Hence the various oppressions exercised upon us by the Lairds whose moors we have perambulated, has taught us to rail, with Jaques, against all the firstborn of Egypt. And deeply have we often sworn, that if any of those gentlemen should be tempted to hunt across Parnassus, or to the demesnes adjacent, or should be detected abandoning their only proper and natural vocation of pursuing, killing and eating the fowls of the air, the beasts of the earth, and the fishes in the waters under the earth, for the unnatural and unsquire-like employment of writing, printing, and publishing, we would then, in return for their lectures on the game laws, introduce them to an acquaintance with the canons of criticism. Such an opportunity of vengeance was rather, however, to be wished than hoped; and therefore Colonel Thornton was not more joyfully surprised when at Dalnacardoch he killed a char with bait, than we were to detect a hunting, hawking, English squire, poaching in the fields of literaWe therefore apprize Colonel Thornton that he must produce his license, and establish his

ture.

1 Who kept a pack of hounds and two hunters, not to men. tion a wife and six children. on sixty pounds a-year.

A variety of the squire-genus found in Scotland.