said moneys, of which I wish that he had specified the sum, you are quite right in denying all knowledge of the transaction.  If charges of this nefarious description are to go forth, sanctioned by all the solemnity of circumstance, and guaranteed by the veracity of verse (as Counsellor Phillips would say), what is to become of readers hitherto implicitly confident in the not less veracious prose of our critical journals? what is to become of the reviews; and, if the reviews fail, what is to become of the editors?  It is common cause, and you have done well to sound the alarm.  I myself, in my humble sphere, will be one of your echoes.  In the words of the tragedian Liston, ‘I love a row,’ and you seem justly determined to make one.

“It is barely possible, certainly improbable, that the writer might have been in jest; but this only aggravates his crime.  A joke, the proverb says, ‘breaks no bones;’ but it may break a bookseller, or it may be the cause of bones being broken.  The jest is but a bad one at the best for the author, and might have been a still worse one for you, if your copious contradiction did not certify to all whom it may concern your own indignant innocence, and the immaculate purity of the British Review.  I do not doubt your word, my dear R——­ts, yet I cannot help wishing that, in a case of such vital importance, it had assumed the more substantial shape of an affidavit sworn before the Lord Mayor Atkins, who readily receives any deposition; and doubtless would have brought it in some way as evidence of the designs of the Reformers to set fire to London, at the same time that he himself meditates the same good office towards the river Thames.

“I recollect hearing, soon after the publication, this subject discussed at the tea-table of Mr. * * * the poet,—­and Mrs. and the Misses * * * * * being in a corner of the room perusing the proof sheets of Mr. * * ’s poems, the male part of the _conversazione_ were at liberty to make some observations on the poem and passage in question, and there was a difference of opinion.  Some thought the allusion was to the ‘British Critic;’ others, that by the expression ‘My Grandmother’s Review,’ it was intimated that ’my grandmother’ was not the reader of the review, but actually the writer; thereby insinuating, my dear Mr. R——­ts, that you were an old woman; because, as people often say, ’Jeffrey’s Review,” ‘Gifford’s Review,’ in lieu of Edinburgh and Quarterly, so ’My Grandmother’s Review’ and R——­ts’s might be also synonymous.  Now, whatever colour this insinuation might derive from the circumstance of your wearing a gown, as well as from your time of life, your general style, and various passages of your writings,—­I will take upon myself to exculpate you from all suspicion of the kind, and assert, without calling Mrs. R——­ts in testimony, that if ever you should be chosen Pope, you will pass through all the previous ceremonies with as much