64 Notes for the Month. [JULY, 



guinea." Apropos, however, to the mention of our ancestors this very 

 charity reminds us that a " reformation" may be sometimes a sort of 

 jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire. The Catholic clergy had no 

 sons : so that our ancestors, on this score, paid neither half-a-crown nor 

 half-a-guinea. 



The advertisements of common traders in an effort to be attractive and 

 eloquent sometimes contain similar whimsicalities of expression. As, 

 for instance, an auctioneer advertises the sale of some unredeemed pawn- 

 broker's pledges, in the Herald of this morning, as "'a short, but grati- 

 fying collection.'' And a pastry-cook of Dean-street, Soho, in The Times, 

 recommends his " plum cakes" as "an agreeable recreation!" 



The hot weather being now " hourly to be expected," the magistrates 

 of Bow-street have issued their notice to the dogs to keep themselves duly 

 tied up for the next two months, and muzzled. Abundant lapping of cold 

 water, and a little brimstone (where it can be had) are recommended ; and 

 all who neglect these cautions are liable to be summarily punished with 

 death. 



Two actions against periodical publications for libel have been tried 

 since our last : one against Knight's Quarterly Magazine, by Mr. Soane, 

 who seems desirous that people who laugh at his architecture should be in 

 a condition to laugh at himself into the bargain : and a second against the 

 Examiner newspaper, by Mr. Parry, the author of a work called " The 

 last Days of Lord Byron," in which a verdict, with small damages, was 

 obtained for the plaintiff. People seldom have patience to be prudent, 

 when their own foibles, or those of their connections, are attacked ; and 

 the Examiner certainly was ill-advised in publishing the charges that 

 Mr. Parry complained of. Mr. P., it will be recollected, wrote a book, 

 or got a book written, called " The last Days of Lord Byron," about two 

 years ago (some time prior to the exposures in the affairs of the " Greek 

 Committee") which contained, among a good many other light, pleasant, 

 readable, and not always uninteresting matters, a very laughable story of a 

 ** breakfast and morning's walk," which the writer went through with 

 Jeremy Bentham. Now, whether it is fair to breakfast with a man first, 

 and quiz him afterwards, may be a point perhaps for dispute ; but, at any 

 rate, Mr. Parry's story contained nothing beyond quizzing; and, if Mr. 

 Bentham's friends had laughed at it (as other people did), in three weeks 

 it would have been forgotten. But, unluckily, laughing was beyond the 

 patience of the little party at the back of St. James's park : the Times 

 newspaper copied Mr. Parry's " breakfast" into its pages, which of course 

 sent the affair all over the kingdom ; and out came the Examiner in a 

 fury in reply ! after threatening vengeance upon the Times (with which it 

 had about as much chance in quarrel as a Millbank wherry would have in 

 trying to run down a Glasgow steam boat) with two paragraphs, in the 

 first of which it called Mr. Parry " an exceedingly ignorant, worthless, 

 boasting, bullying, and drunken individual, late a caulker, but calling 

 himself a Major;'* and in the next describing him, in still more direct 

 terms, as (" not to repeat the worst of his character") " a slanderer, a sot, 

 a bully, and a poltroon." 



Now these were hard terms, to use against a man for no offence 

 beyond that of laughing at Mr. Bentham, and a few of his friends, 

 without conveying any imputation against their moral characters ; .and 

 the Examiner forgot, while it applied them, that this person, who is 



