wretched creature and no one minded what he said; though, to be sure, the Hon. Grantley Berkeley thought it necessary, in this same year, 1836, to call him out for a scurrilous attack upon himself and his cousin, Lady Euston, in a notice of Berkeley’s novel, “Castle Berkeley.” The latter, in his very diverting “Life and Recollections,” gives a circumstantial history of this duel and of the flogging which he administered to Fraser for publishing the article, and of Maginn’s shameful treatment of poor Miss Landon. But one of the notices provoked by “Pencillings” came near having serious consequences for Willis. In a letter in the “Mirror” of April 18, 1835, he had inserted a postscript, after his signature, as he claimed, and meant only for Morris’s private eye, giving some information about the sales of books in London. In this occurred, among other things, the sentence following: “Captain Marryat’s gross trash sells immensely about Wapping and Portsmouth, and brings him five or six hundred the book, but that can scarce be called literature.” Morris printed it with the rest of the letter, and when it reached England the gallant captain was naturally displeased by it. His revenge was to publish in his magazine, the “Metropolitan” for January, 1836, a review of “Pencillings,” or rather a grossly personal review of the author of “Pencillings.” The article was less telling than the “Quarterly’s,” simply because Marryat did not drive so sharp a quill as the editor of the “Quarterly.” But the latter knew his business as a reviewer and confined himself to the book in hand. Marryat, on the contrary, traveled outside the record and helplessly allowed his private grievance to appear. He declared that Willis was a “spurious _attaché_,” who had made his way into English society under false colors. “He makes invidious, uncharitable, and ill-natured remarks upon authors and their works; all of which he dispatches for the benefit of the reading public of America, and, at the same time that he has thus stabbed them behind their backs, he is requesting to be introduced to them--bowing, smiling, and simpering.” “Although we are well acquainted with the birth, parentage, and history of Mr. Willis, previous to his making his continental tour, we will pass them over in silence; and we think that Mr. Willis will acknowledge that we are generous in so doing.” “It is evident that Mr. Willis has never, till lately, been in good society, either in England or America.” Finally he exhumed from some quarter the pasquinade of poor Joe Snelling, referred to in our third chapter, from which he printed the following lines by way of showing Willis’s standing at home:--