Within the month Mr. Woodbee will write to one Marquis, one Earl, two Bishops, and two Reviewers-Major assuring them that he is _not_ the Author. Mr. Sligo will cautiously avoid making any such declaration, and will take occasion significantly to remark upon the exceeding impropriety of saying to any person that a work which has been published anonymously is supposed to be his. He will observe also that it is altogether unwarrantable to ask any one under such circumstances whether the report be true. Mr. Blueman's opinion of the book will be asked by four and twenty female correspondents, all of the order of the stocking. Professor Wilson will give it his hearty praise. Sir Walter Scott will deny that he has any hand in it. Mr. Coleridge will smile if he is asked the question. If it be proposed to Sir Humphrey Davy he will smile too, and perhaps blush also. The Laureate will observe a careless silence; Mr. Wordsworth a dignified one. And Professor Porson, if he were not gone where his Greek is of no use to him, would accept credit for it, though he would not claim it. The Opium-Eater while he peruses it, will doubt whether there is a book in his hand, or whether he be not in a dream of intellectual delight. “My little more than nothing” Jeffrey the second,—(for of the small Jeffreys Jeffrey Hudson must always be the first)—will look less when he pops upon his own name in its pages. Sir Jeffrey Dunstan is Jeffrey the third: he must have been placed second in right of seniority, had it not been for the profound respect with which I regard the University of Glasgow. The Rector of Glasgow takes precedence of the Mayor of Garratt. And what will the Reviewers do? I speak not of those who come to their office, (for such there are, though few,) like Judges to the bench, stored with all competent knowledge and in an equitable mind; prejudging nothing, however much they may foreknow; and who give their sentence without regard to persons, upon the merits of the case;—but the aspirants and wranglers at the bar, the dribblers and the spit-fires, (there are of both sorts;)—the puppies who bite for the pleasure which they feel in exercising their teeth, and the dogs whose gratification consists in their knowledge of the pain and injury that they inflict;—the creepers of literature, who suck their food like the ivy from what they strangulate and kill; they who have a party to serve, or an opponent to run down; what opinion will they pronounce in their utter ignorance of the author? They cannot play without a bias in their bowls!—Aye, there's the rub! Ha ha, ha ha! this World doth pass Most merrily, I'll be sworn, For many an honest Indian Ass Goes for a Unicorn. Farra diddle dyno, This is idle fyno! Tygh hygh, tygh hygh! O sweet delight! He tickles this age that can Call Tullia's ape a marmasite, And Leda's goose a swan.[1] [Footnote 1: BRITISH BIBLIOGRAPHER.]