338 COLLOQUIA ENTOMOLOGICA. 



you say (quizzing me, I know), that the stored-up treasures 

 of by-gone ages overflowed in a tumult of quotation : and it is 

 true ; the scenery called it forth ; yes ! I remember those 

 scenes with more intense pleasure than when I witnessed 

 them. Oh ! that I were now on Snowdon's shaggy side, with 

 one friend to whom I could whisper, " solitude is sweet." 



Ent. Should you live until you have a beard on your face, 

 your Platonic discourses will be very fine, about outliving 

 love, and so forth ; at present, they appear rather out of joint 

 with time. What other criticisms have you for me? what 

 other errors have you found ? 



Erro. I have enough to do to criticise others, without finding 

 fault with my contributors, and in that I can't give satisfaction; 

 Swainson and W. Christy have both been written to by James 

 Wilson, about his Entomologia Edinensis. Now, it's brother 

 John, the magnifico, the Christopher North of Blackwood's 

 Magazine, that I 'm afraid of; if we offend him, he will anni- 

 hilate us with his knout. What shall I do ? I 'd make any 

 apology. 



Ent. I should have thought you had had enough ex- 

 perience in making apologies already. 



Erro. True; I don't excel, I believe, in that species of 

 composition. 



Ent. People who excel in apologies excel in nothing else. 



Erro. I am heartily tired of the editorship. My first 

 number cost me fourteen pounds in weight ; my second eight 

 pounds ; and my Midsummer number fifteen pounds ; before 

 the volume is complete, I shall be a second living skeleton. 

 I knew myself to be unfit from the first. " Mea semper fuit 

 in hac re voluntas et sententia ; quemvis ut hoc mallem de iis 

 qui essent idonei suscipere quam me ; me ut mallem quern 

 neminem." I wish you had kept it. 



Ent. Thank you, very cordially ; but I do not feel suffi- 

 ciently Quixotic to take the helm of the Fire-fly at the present 

 crisis ; besides, it 's too much trouble, this hot weather, to 

 contend with the malcontents. I'll take my copies, but no 

 more trouble. 



Er^o. But, about Wilson. 



Ent. Be under no alarm about that: a regular scarifying 

 from North would be an advertisement; he hawks not at 

 ignoble game ; lions prey not on mice ; if Christopher do 



