vive Mr NISBETS letter; and he will do him the honour of bestowing on it a total refutation.

MR SMELLIES FINAL REJOINDER.

Edinburgh Magazine and Review, vol. iv. p.

555.

To the Reverend Mr CHARLES NISBET, Minister of the Gospel at Montrose.

SIR,

AFTER receiving so complete a refutation to your first letter, I never dreamed of your being mad enough to attempt a second. But you yielded, it seems, to the solicitation of your friends. False or ignorant must those friends be, who could counsel you to expose at once both your understanding and your heart. The charge is weighty; but it is not difficult to prove it to the conviction of all mankind. Your first contained many striking marks of disingenuity, and of a malicious resentment, unaccompanied with capacity. I was willing, however, to consider it as an unguarded effusion of rage, or as an effect of a

petulant vanity, which is apt to betray weak men into a notion of their own dignity and importance. But these apologetical phantoms are now vanished. You have uncovered your duplicity, you have banished every favourable idea that your friends might wish to indulge, you have put it out of the power of benevolence itself to palliate your baseness, or conceal your demerit. demerit. With much reluctance, therefore, I proceed to show you in your real character, by exhibiting a new series of falsehoods with which you have thought fit to disgrace your last epistle, the composing of which cost you and your friends so much agitation, anxiety, and trouble.

You deny me the honour of writing my own letter. This gives me no uneasiness, as the contrary is well known to many better men than Mr NISBET. Such folly and baseness could only proceed from a man who is more hackneyed in the arts of deceit than I ever before had any conception of. If I could have had the meanness to have signed what was written by another person, I should consider myself to be ripening apace, and might entertain flattering ideas of acquiring in time those qualities which would entitle me to be

a companion in turpitude to the minister of Montrose.

You struggle hard, Sir, to wipe off the imputation of quoting Scripture ludicrously in the General Assembly. You say I gave no authority for such an insinuation. The only authority I had was your own. In your first letter are the following words :-" As I had formerly offended some tender consciences, and had been called to order for quoting Scripture in that house," &c. It was in this manner also you apologized in the Assembly for repeating passages from SHAKESPEARE. You asserted that you had been called to order for quoting Scripture in that house. This then is repeating your own authority: but you think it not worthy of credit, and I heartily agree with you. There is no blunder more common than the mistaking of imperfection for ability. Do you not seriously think yourself a capital orator? Is it not a common practice with you to collect jests, ludicrous scraps from poems, plays, &c. with a view to belch them out in the General Assembly, for the purpose of raising a laugh? Did you never perceive that the rabble laugh only at absurdities? It is wonderful that none of your

friends have had the virtue to inform you, that this conduct, in place of bringing you fame or respect, could only procure you the character of a reverend buffoon. But why this anxiety about trifles? You have been accused of deliberate falsehoods, and of quoting dishonestly; but crimes of this nature seem not to hurt you: if you can free yourself from the notion of playing with the Sacred Writings, you are perfectly unconcerned, not because you think this the worst species of wickedness, but because you know it might alarm the vulgar, who are not qualified to form a judgment of literary demerit.

ALLOW me now to collect a few passages from your last letter; and I will bet a thousand to one, that it is beyond the power of human credulity to believe a single word they contain. Here they are:-" What you say of my attributing the account of the Assembly to a particular gentleman is entirely your own imagination, as I know not who was the author of that account, and so could have no particular person in view." Again, "I know none of your gentlemen behind the curtain, and so cannot distinguish their productions." Further, "How the allusion to a story of a VOL. I. H h

modern critic could have given you such offence, or have been thought to point out a particular gentleman, unless that gentleman is conscious of guilt, I am unable to imagine." Now, Sir, a few words for your ear; and, if you have not lost even the most distant idea of virtue, they must act as so many daggers in your heart. heart. You tell a particular and circumstantial falsehood,-you narrate the forged action, you fix the place and the fancied company,-you lay the scene at the door of a particular gentleman, whom you describe; and yet, after the calumny has been detected, you are not ashamed to deny that you had any particular person in view! This is truly shocking. In the most hardened sinner, it would be reckoned so base and unworthy as to fall below the standard of rectitude, even when estimated by thieves and highwaymen ; -in a minister of CHRIST, it is horrid, and excites ideas of wretchedness, malice, and depravity, beyond the powers of expression. T go farther with you, Sir: I appeal to many of your acquaintances to whom you have repeatedly mentioned the gentlemans name you have chosen to calumniate. I appeal to those confidents who are in possession of your letters on this subject. In what a despicable