[4] One of the most violent of Cobbett’s adversaries was no less a person than Matthew Carey. The latter was at this time a hot-headed young Irishman, and _would not_ have his toes trodden upon. He seems to have taken particular offence at the story of his having refused to publish Cobbett’s first pamphlet; and afterwards, when J. W. Fenno had included his name among a list of the United Irishmen, and Cobbett had reproduced it with sarcastic reference to the “O’Careys,” he burst out into a fearful display of ill-temper. His Billingsgate was terrible. He produced “The Porcupiniad: a Hudibrastic Poem,” and “A Plumb Pudding for the Humane, Chaste, Valiant, Enlightened Peter Porcupine.” The latter is embellished with a vignette, exhibiting a porcupine suspended from a street lamp-post; and it would be impossible to exceed the virulence of its style or the vileness of its language, whilst, in truth, Cobbett had endeavoured to avoid falling foul of Carey. But time healed all this. Thirty years later, Cobbett and Carey were corresponding in their old age as if there had never been anything of the sort. Another opponent was William Duane, also an Irishman of some talent, who had succeeded Bache as editor of the _Aurora_. And there are some curious effusions among the poems of Philip Freneau, a man whose writings breathe the most virulent hatred, not only against Great Britain, but against the Washington and Adams administrations. The poet of the other side was William Cliffton, who died at an early age in 1799. He was a warm admirer of Cobbett, and a hearty Federalist. When Gifford’s “Baviad and Mæviad” was republished in America, he composed, at Cobbett’s request, an Epistle Dedicatory, addressed to Mr. Gifford. [5] “A gentleman for whom I entertained a very high respect, and whose conduct constantly evinced that he was not merely a receiver of the public money, but one who had the interest and honour of his king and country deeply at heart.”--_Political Register_, viii. 548. [6] Dr. Abercrombie died in 1841, at a very advanced age. [7] By the month of August, 1797, the _Gazette_ had more than 2500 subscribers. CHAPTER VIII. “WHEN I LEFT THEM, I CERTAINLY DID SHAKE THE DUST OFF MY SHOES.”