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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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The bitter sweet personage in Goldsmith ' s pleasant comedy , The Good-natured Man , who discovered that ( Croaker rhymed to Joker , and so they laughed / was probably some ex-official , with constitutional bitterness much exacerbated by retirement from
office , and whose sweetness consisted in the smiles he wore as joculator-general of his party . He describes himself , with no little vanity of authorship , as having sent his last letter , ' which will amuse us I promise you , ' to a certain * gazetteer , on the increase and progress of earthquakes ; ' doubtless some periodical rather on the wane , and inclined to evil forebodings by the dropping off of its subscribers .
Be these points of literary history as they may , it has been an allowed ex-official privilege in all ages , that , in consideration of leaving an exhausted treasury to plague their successors , they shall carry with them , stores of bitterness , and vexation of spirit , to amuse themselves and friends in their retirement . Their other
legitimate satisfaction is , to indulge in national predictions of lean kine and blighted ears , though even this keen delight is marred by the thought that themselves caused the evils they now foretell . In the last number of the * Quarterly Review / there is an article entitled ' Miss Martineau ' s Monthly Novels / reported to be the work of an ex-official . His future contributions to periodicals will
be , we trust , not monthly , nor yet quarterly , nor even annual , but for life ; so delighted shall we be to retain him in the situation he at present occupies . Were he restored to his official duties , he might perhaps be worse employed thfKi in offering insults to the womanhood of England , We will not transcribe the peroration of this review , in which he insults a l ^ dy whose delightful and
instructive volumes have already dispelled much of the ignorance and prejudice in which he breathes most freely . We shall only refer the reader to this precious passage , sure thq . t every man and every woman , —for those who offer and those who countenance such language are not to be reckoned , —will have no doubt on whom the disgrace of this unmanly attempt really falls . It is as well , perhaps , that the most flagitious attack of this description by which Miss Martineau has been assailed , should
bernnde from such a quarter . It tends to unveil the foul reality of things which have long been gilded over . Talk of the gentlemen of England , indeed ! where are they to be found ? If their own organ is to be credited , less among the Tory Aristocracy and the Church , for these are the parties on whose behalf the « Quarterly Review * speaks , than in any other class of society whatever . We know not where to look for the mechanic , however uneducated his mind or coarse his habits , who would not shrink in utter disgust from the language and insinuations which
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ON THE REVIEW ENTITLED , < MISS MARTINJSAU'S MQNTJJLY KOVEJ-S / IN THE LAST QUARTERLY .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1833, page 314, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2614/page/26/
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