There's Vamp, Scamp, and Mouthy, and Wordswords and Co.[1]
With their damnable
Ink.Hold, my good friend, do you know10
Whom you speak to?
Tra.Right well, boy, and so does "the Row:"[2]
You're an author—a poet—
Ink.And think you that I
Can stand tamely in silence, to hear you decry
The Muses?
Tra.Excuse me: I meant no offence
To the Nine; though the number who make some pretence
To their favours is such but the subject to drop,
I am just piping hot from a publisher's shop,
(Next door to the pastry-cook's; so that when I
Cannot find the new volume I wanted to buy
On the bibliopole's shelves, it is only two paces,20
As one finds every author in one of those places:)
Where I just had been skimming a charming critique,
So studded with wit, and so sprinkled with Greek!
Where your friend—you know who—has just got such a threshing,
That it is, as the phrase goes, extremely "refreshing."[3]
What a beautiful word!
Ink.Very true; 'tis so soft
And so cooling—they use it a little too oft;
And the papers have got it at last—but no matter.
So they've cut up our friend then?
Tra.Not left him a tatter—
Not a rag of his present or past reputotion,30
- ↑ [Compare the dialogue between Mr. Paperstamp, Mr. Feathernest, Mr. Vamp, etc., in Peacock's Melincourt, cap. xxxii, Works, 1875, i. 272.]
- ↑ [Compare—
"The last edition see by Long. and Co.,
Rees, Hurst, and Orne, our fathers of the Row."The Search after Happiness, by Sir Walter Scott. - ↑ [This phrase is said to have been first used in the Edinburgh Review—probably by Jeffrey. (See review of Rogers's Human Life, 1818, Edin. Rev. vol. 31, p. 325.)]
