Joseph Ritson

"You will have perceived, I suppose, by your Magazine, that Herbert Croft has been obliged to relinquish the publication of his grand dictionary for want of subscribers. He is chiefly indebted, I believe, to the absurdity of his plan, which, by retaining all the blunders of Johnson and adding his own refutations, &c. doubled the bulk and price of the work. Besides, his printed specimen afforded no very promising idea of his etymological abilities ; and in fact some of his late letters in the newspapers seem to imply a derangement of intellect."

"I am astonished that your friend Brand should be so absurd as to fancy that Gateshead means "the end of the road," instead of "the head of the goat;"and that Bede has confounded "gate, via, with goat, capra.""

"I am assured by Citoyenne Eaton that the preface to The rights of man was not written by doctor Parkinson (an apothecary at Hoxton); though I certainly believe (at present) that Paine knew nothing at all of the matter. This conviction, no doubt, gives me a very indifferent opinion of Daniel Isaac; but whether he deserves the gallows is another matter."

"The library of Herbert Croft (author of "Love and Madness," &c.) is just now selling off by auction: but it seems to contain little or nothing in your way; nor, in fact, of much rarity or value, in any other."

"I am sorry to say that I have looked over (for it is impossible that any one should read) your publication of" Scotish Poems of the sixteenth century" with astonishment and disgust. To rake up the false, scandalous, and despicable libels against the most beautiful, amiable, and accomplished princess that ever existed, whose injurious treatment,misfortunes, persecution, imprisonment, and barbarous murder, will be a lasting blot on the national character to the end of time, and which were, as they deserved, apparently devoted to everlasting oblivion and contempt, to stuff almost an entire volume with the uninteresting lives of such scoundrels as regent Murray and the laird of Grange, to publish in short such vile, stupid,and infamous stuff, which few can read, and none can approve, is a lamentable proof of a total want of taste or judgement, a disgrace to Scotish literature, degrades the reputation of the editor, and discredits your own. I must be free to tell you that I will not suffer such an infamous and detestable heap of trash to pollute and infect my shelves: it is therefore under sentence of immediate transportation, though much more fit for some other situation than a gentlemans library, or even a booksellers shop. I confess, at the same time, that the libel against the Tulchan bishop, though excessively scurrilous, has much merit, and would have been admissible in any collection of a different description."

"I have great reason to doubt the truth of the anecdote you give (Appendix, p. 85, of your Memoirs) of Cunningham the poet (without an e). I knew him personally toward the latter part of his life, when those moderate sacrifices you speak of, had totally disqualified him from writing pastorals. His first and best pieces were produced before he had acquired that pernicious habit which impaired his faculties and shortened his days. Whiskey may inspire, but I will never believe that gin does."

"Your narrative of the dying moments and last advice of poor Cumyng is really so ludicrous and so lamentable, that one does not know whether to laugh or cry. I hope you will take care that a piece of eloquence so interesting and important to society does not perish with its author. Suppose you were to draw it up as a communication for the next volume of "Transactions of the Antiquaries of Scotland," under the title of "Cumyngs Legacy, or a Dissertation upon." If you should happen to be at a loss from want of an acquaintance with the subject, Master Smellie will doubtless be ready to lend you any assistance in order to do honour to the memory of his departed friend. Or, perhaps, as you have it in contemplation to favour the public with some biographical anecdotes of the author, which I dare say will be much more entertaining, and just as important, as Boswells Life of Johnson, you might with great propriety enhance the value of the work by so curious an appendix. I am, however, really sorry to lose so worthy and respectable an acquaintance, whom I hoped to render a valuable correspondent. Apropos. Are my ancient spurs, &c. deposited in the archives of the Society? I have no great expectation from his library; though, I suppose, the heraldical books may make it an object."

"Mr. Gibbon is said to be now employed (at Lausanne) in writing the History of England. For my own part I think he has already written too much, and that his merit would have been more generally acknowledged had he never completed his Decline of the Empire."

"Your observations on Godwins inaccuracies are well founded. I apprised him of all or most of them long ago; and can only attribute their retention to his obstinacy, or ignorance, I am, however, preparing another list for him. They say he is about another novel."

"You must cease to consider Lord Hailes as a most faithful publisher; as I who have collated many of his articles with the Bannatyne MS. know the contrary to my cost. I do not, indeed, mean to say that he is so intentionally faithless as Ramsay; but I do say that his transcripts have been very inaccurate, that he has in numerous instances wilfully altered the original orthography, and not unfrequently misinterpreted the text of the MS. which I suspect he was occasionally unable to read."

"I shall be glad if you will inform me who was the editor of Montrose's memoirs, published in 1756. I had understood him to be the late lord Hailes, which I now fancy a mistake, as his lordships character seems to savour too much of the virulency of whiggism for an admirer of Montrose."

"I have been able to meet with no further intelligence about Sir Alexander Halket. He is said to be the author of Gilderoy, and I strongly suspect him to have had a principal hand in the forgery of Hardyknute, which is all that I know of him."

"I suppose you will find citizen Hodgsons translation of the Systime executed in a very slovenly and inaccurate manner. The poor fellow is starving in Newgate, and I do not understand he is likely to receive much benefit by the sale of his work."

"You appear to have seen Holcrofts pamphlet; which certainly displays much ability and goodwriting, but most of all the extreme vanity and self-importance of the author, which is equally ridiculous and disgusting. He thinks it impossible that any court or jury in the world could have resisted the force of his combined eloquence and philosophy; and actually told me that hewould gladly have given one of his hands for the opportunity of making his defence, which by the way would certainly have hanged him, however favourable his judges might have been beforehand."

"Your friend Hutchinson has finished his history in a most slovenly, disgraceful, and even swindling manner. To compel his subscribers to take what they had on a formal application uniformly rejected, I mean the account of Allerton, Howdenshires and the North-Bishopric, was certainly a rascally and sharking trick, which one would not easily have suspected in a gentleman-author. You have occasionally observed, no doubt, what a confoundedly ignorant fellow he is: in looking over his Excursion to the lakes, and View of Northumberland, lately, I was perfectly astonished at the monstrous blunders I met with...Now do not you instantly perceive how abominably this blockhead has corrupted a parcel of names which every one but such an ass must have been perfectly acquainted with..."

"Apropos, what is your expectation from Herbert Crofts dictionary? I wish he may have sense and spirit to investigate the principles of orthography, of which Dr. Johnson was totally ignorant. We want a system prodigiously to prevent the fluctuation of the language."

"There is certainly the strangest mixture of ignorance and idleness throughout Johnsons Dictionary that was ever exhibited in such a work."

"Talking of historys, i suppose we are to have nothing further from that fellow Hutchinson: We shall therefore lose the most interesting part of his subject. An ATTORNEY, who HAS BUT ONE OBJECT AND THAT IS THE LUCRE OF GAIN, should never be encourageed in attempts of this nature."

"Have you seen our friend Langdales History of North Allerton? You will hear, perhaps, or suspect that I gave him some little assistance; but he seems to have been beholden to a much cleverer fellow. I dare say you will not think me capable of saying that a structure was pulled down by "illiterate hands.""

"This is believed to be the completest list of this voluminous, prosiack, and driveling monk, that can be formed...in truth, and fact, these stupid and fatigueing productions, which by no means deserve the name of poetry, and their stil more stupid and disgusting author, who disgraces the name and patronage of his master Chaucer, are neither worth collecting (unless it be as typographical curiositys, or on account of the beautyful illuminations in some of his presentation copys), not even worthy of preservation: being only suitablely adapted "ad ficum & piperem," and other more bare and servile uses. How little he profited by the correction, or instructions of his great patron is manifest in almost every part of his elaborate drawlings, in which there are scarcely three lines together of pure and acurate metre."

"You will have heard, I presume, that Wintons Chronicle, by a Mr. Macpherson, is in great forwardness. It is to surpass, in point of correctness and typography, any thing that has hitherto appeared. But, I confess, the specimen I have seen betrayed symptoms of licentiousness and affectation which I can neither approve of nor account for."

"Now Mr. Malone will take this exceedingly ill; for Mr. Malone has a very high opinion of himself, and a very mean one of every body else. But I confess I do not seek to please Mr. Malone: I wish to rescue the language and sense of an admirable author from the barbarism and corruption they have acquired in passing through the hands of this incompetent and unworthy editor. In a word, I mean to convict and not to convince him."

"But it is not the want of ear and judgement only of which I have to accuse Mr. Malone: he stands charged with divers other high crimes and misdemeanors against the divine majesty of our sovereign lord of the drama; with deforming his text, and degrading his margin, by intentional corruption, flagrant misrepresentation, malignant hypercriticism, and unexampled scurrility. These charges shall be proved--not, as Mr. Malone proves things, by groundless opinion and confident assertion, but--by fact, argument, and demonstration. How sayest thou, culprit? Guilty or not guilty?"

"Mr. Malone can not read, and is totally ignorant of the consequences of his own absurd ideas; he could never else have thought such a line as the following consistent with the laws of metre: '"What wheels? Racks? fi-ers? What flaying? boiling?' Thus, however, he insists that Shakespeare intended us to read--swor-en, char-rums, instead of sworn, charms; su-ar, for sure, &c. &c. converting one syllable into two, two into three or four and so on."

"Every reader of this incomparable edition will have frequent occasion to observe that the editor "draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument." The present instance, indeed, is nothing in comparison to pages of inanity with which the work abounds, and which, on account of their "true no-meaning," are actually incapable of refutation or discussion."

"I have just dipped far enough into Mr. Malones edition of Shakspeare to find he has not been sparing of his epithets whenever he has occasion to introduce me to the notice of his readers. In fact, I believe I originally gave him some little provocation. But I thought your countrymen had been remarkable rather for the suddenness of their anger than the duration of their malignity. Have the morals of this worthy editor been corrupted by his long residence amongst us?"

"I have still some intention of printing an edition of Shakspeare, in which I shall carefully attend to what you say. I send you a pamphlet in which I flatter myself I have totally demolished the great Mr. Malone. He has attempted to answer it by the most contemptible thing in nature."

"You will do Mr. Malone great injustice if you suppose him to be in all respects what I may have endeavoured to represent him in some. In order that he may recover your more favourable opinion, let me recommend to your perusal, the discussion, in his prolegomena, intitled "Shakspeare, Ford and Jonson ;." and his "Dissertation on the three parts of King Henry the Sixth" (to which I am more indebted for an acquaintance with the manner of our great dramatic poet than to any thing I ever read)."

"Dr. Percy has confounded the vesper bell with the curfew. The reason of this temporary cessation of bloodshed, proceeded from respect to the Virgin Mary; for, at this hour, the angelical salutation was sung; whence it was sometimes called the Ave Maria bell. It is still customary, upon the Spanish stage, for the actors, in the midst of the grossest and most indecent buffoonery, to fall down on their knees, and pull out their beads, at the sound of this bell."

"Mr. Pinkerton is neither the first, nor likely to be the last, fabricator of Old Scotish Ballads."

"I am sorry to say that Dr. Farmer has not been able to find the volume of tracts containing "Sir D. Lindsays Satire." He supposes it to have been lent to Mr. Malone, to whom Mr. Steevens has promised to make immediate application. But perhaps you have already learned that Pinkerton has lately published these satires from a (very incorrect) copy of the Hyndford MS. together with the various readings of the printed edition: published under the name of J. Nichols, for C. Dilly in the Poultry, 3 vols, crown 8vo. price 9s. He has had the impudence and dishonesty to insert in this collection a curious old MS. poem in my possession, of which a friend of his had some years since surreptitiously obtained a copy, and which on that friends application from him, I positively refused my leave to print."

"Pinkerton seems busy in his intended history of Scotland; whether it is to be the same with that advertised under the name of Robert Heron, I cannot learn. His treatment of the " Celtic savages" is to be speedily resented in print by the Reverend John Lane Buchanan, nominal author of "Travels in the Western Hebrides," who seems in fact, to be as very a Celt as his antagonist could possibly wish for. I am sorry to find so good a cause in the hands of such an incompetent advocate."

"Our friend Pinkerton, I am told, to complete the infamy of his character, has turned critical reviewer, a situation, of course, which admits neither truth nor honesty. He will therefore have the pleasure of thundering his own damnation upon the heads of others, among whom, I suppose, he will take care not to forget...J. Ritson"

"From the falsehood, impudence and scurrility of The Critical Review, I conclude that Pinkerton is one of its principal authors, and particularly the gentleman to whom I and my little publication are so much obliged. You will think me too revengeful when I wish he were compelled to subscribe his name to his criticisms. The Shakspeare papers, of which you have heard so much, and which I have carefully examined, are, I can assure you, a parcel of forgeries, studiously and ably calculated to deceive the public: the imposition being, in point of art and foresight, beyond any thing of the kind that has been witnessed since the days of Annius Viterbiensis..."

"I observe with pleasure, what Mr. Herd has remarked upon the confusion made by Pinkerton of the two Pennecuiks. He has, with equal ignorance, confounded the two Hamiltons (of Bangour and Gilbertfield). But, indeed, his blunders are venial when compared with the more criminal parts of his literary and moral character."

"You will before this I suppose, have heard of the dismission of those miscreant blockheads who formed the late infamous administration, some of whom it is to be hoped will yet hop headless. You'll see more in time. The national ship is now without either pilot or officers, there not being a minister in place. A mutiny among the crew is every moment expected. However I think you may begin to prepare yourself for a trip to the Netherlands. Peace! Peace! will be the undoubted blessing of the new government...We may now begin to hope for the representation of a New Comedy called, "The Blessings of the Constitution restored.""

"I am sorry to learn the death of poor Smellie, whose name reminds me of a whimsical anecdote. In the course of a conversation one evening at the Tripe-club (when I was last in Edinburgh,) upon the aversion which the people of Scotland had formerly borne to the family at present on the throne, Smellie remarked, as an equally strong and singular instance, that they had given the royal name, Geordie, to a sir-reverence [human feces]. Now, on looking casually over "The works of Captain Alex. Ratcliffe," printed in 1696, but apparently written some years before, I find that this illustrious name had been thus lamentably degraded before the present family was heard of; from which, of course, as a loyal subject, I am anxious to remove so dirty an imputation. The actual origin of this curious appellation it is now, perhaps, impossible to ascertain."

"I inclose you a pamphlet lately published by Stewart (he does not deserve the name of citizen) which he represented to me as the first political production of the age. I mean of course to have no further acquaintance with him..."

"I called some days since at the White Bear, but was informed that citizen Bruin was out of town. Taking a walk however on Sunday evening to Bagnigge Wells I saw him entering one of the rooms, disguised, like a gentleman, in a new white coat and an umbrella in his hand, which made me the less forward to accost him, as I presume he is no longer "the individual John" than he wears a blue coat with a red cape. Indeed, I am so disgusted with his bigotted prejudices and absurd opinions, that the continuation of our acquaintance will be owing rather to ceremony than to esteem..."

"Stewart is just arrived from America, and as mad as ever. He now proposes a course of lectures upon mental capacity, or, in other words, to teach people to think; which he seems to flatter himself will be attended with success: I am of a different opinion."

"Mr. Fraser Tytler, who promised me to look after it, is probably dissatisfied with the manner in which I have thought myself obliged to differ from his father; but which is no other, I believe, than he himself differed from Hume and Robertson. Magis amica Veritas was his motto, and is mine."

"For my own part, I often think that if I were some years younger and perfectly independent, I would venture myself among the inhospitable savages of Connaught or Munster, of whom Twiss was so much afraid, in order to acquire their language in its original purity...I can make nothing, however, of his "Vindication of the Ancient History of Ireland." He seems to be somewhat in the condition in which Festus (I think it was) supposed Paul; as, if much learning have not made him mad, it has made him, at least, completely ridiculous and absurd."

"This faucon brode you most sagaciously interpret to be a bird ...Though such unparalleled ignorance, such matchless effrontery, is not, Mr. Warton, in my humble opinion, worthy of any thing but castigation or contempt, yet, should there be a single person, beside yourself, who can mistake the meaning of so plain, so obvious a passage (which I much suspect to have been corrupted in coming through your hands) I shall beg leave to inform him, that a faucon brode is nothing more or less than a broad fauchion."

"You must either, Mr. Warton, deal in very strange histories, or else you are very unmindful of what you read, or careless of what you say. And, indeed, I cannot but think, if that good and wholesome discipline, which the name of MILTON may probably call to your remembrance, were still in use at Trinity College, the more than childish ignorance of a certain near friend of yours would hardly escape without experiencing its salutary effects."

"Your blunders are beyond computation, "out of all cess;" and I have neither the leisure nor the patience to detect you in every one. But your ignorance is so amazing and unaccountable, in many of them, that I cannot choose but bestow more attention upon them than I otherwise would do. For instance, how could you contrive to misinterpret, and corrupt the above simple phrase hedde ferly..."

"Such a shuffleing, nonsensical paragraph was, I firmly believe, never put together since the invention of letters. That which I do not, and which, I think, no one can, understand. I shall not meddle with."

"It is, in my opinion, a most extraordinary, and, I hope and believe, unparalleled circumstance, that a man of eminence in the literary world should, in order to enhance the bulk and price of his writings, hazard his reputation upon, and descend to, or rather be guilty of, such low, such paltry, such dishonourable, and even dishonest artifices, as almost to deserve the name and punishment of a--SWINDLER."

"I have lost my old friend Tom Warton —Well!" I war not with the dead," and shall treat his ashes with the reverence I ought possibly to have bestowed on his person. Unfortunately he is introduced, not always in the most serious or respectful manner, in a work which has been long printed, but which I think my bookseller does not choose to publish till both the editor and all his friends and enemies are buried in oblivion."

"It will be difficult, however, if not impracticable to form a complete collection of David Williamses publications...You probably overrate the merit of the above… Godwin says he is never without an eye to self; and, in fact, a man of talents, who can puff Velnos vegetable sirop, and fawn upon the Prince of Wales, cannot be a very virtuous character. I have a notion, indeed, that he is a plausible parasite, and that it was as much by well-managed flattery as by profound politics he insinuated himself into the good graces of the citizeness Roland."

"I am sorry to hear of the indisposition of Cumyng, who seemed a very intelligent and respectable man. It is, however, some consolation to you, on the approaching loss of a good friend, that you will get his library."