No. 30. SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 1785.

"SIR,

"TO THE LOUNGER.

"ALTHOUGH a stranger to your person, I have the honour of being pretty nearly allied to you. When you know who I am, I flatter myself you will not think yourself disgraced by the alliance; and that you will permit me to claim kindred with you. Of this you may be assured, I would not do it, did I not entertain a favourable opinion of you; and having nothing to ask, you may consider my desire to be ranked among your friends as a mark of approbation. Know then, Sir, that the person who has now the honour to address you is a member of the Mirror Club.

66

Although long since dead as an author, you will readily believe that I am interested in the success of The Lounger. Persons placed in the same situations naturally feel a sympathetic sort of attachment for each other. When The Lounger was first advertised, I could not help recollecting the sensations I experienced when the publication of The Mirror was first announced in the papers; and when your introductory number appeared, I sent for it with an impatience, and a solicitude, which I should not have felt in the same degree had I not once been in a situation similar to yours.

"You, Sir, started with many advantages which we did not possess. The public are now taught to

know, that it is possible to carry on a periodical work of this kind in Edinburgh; and that, if tolerably executed, it will be read, and will hold its place with other works of the same kind. But when we boldly gave The Mirror to the world, a very different notion prevailed. It was supposed that no such work could be conducted with any propriety on this side of the Tweed. Accordingly, The Mirror was received with the most perfect indifference in our own country; and during the publication, it was indebted for any little reputation it received in Scotland, to the notice that happened to be taken of it by some persons of rank and of taste in England. Nay, Sir, strange as you may think it, it is certainly true, that, narrow as Edinburgh is, there were men who consider themselves as men of letters, who never read a number of it while it was going on. "But although in this and in many other respects The Lounger may possess advantages over The Mirror, there is one particular in which I am apt to believe, that we the members of the Mirror Club possessed an advantage over the author of the Lounger. You, Sir, if I mistake not, conduct your work single and alone, unconnected with any person whatever. We, Sir, were a society, consisting of a few friends, closely united by long habits of intimacy. Not only, therefore, is your task much more arduous than ours, but, in the way of amusement, we certainly had the advantage of you. can never forget the pleasure we enjoyed in meeting to read our papers in the Club. They were criticized with perfect freedom, but with the greatest good humour. When any of us produced a paper, which, either from the style or manner of it, or from the nature of the subject seemed inadmisible, it was condemned without hesitation, and

I

the author, putting it in his pocket, drank a bumper to its manes. We had stated meetings to receive the communications with which we were honoured, which afforded another source of amusement. This pleasure, however, was not without alloy. We were often, from particular circumstances, obliged to reject compositions of real merit; and what perhaps was equally distressing, we were sometimes obliged to abridge or to alter the papers which we published. Might I presume to give you an advice, it would be, to use this liberty as rarely as possible. We authors know that there is a certain complacency, not to call it vanity, which a man feels for his own compositions, which makes him unwilling to submit them to the correction of he does not know whom, or to acquiesce in an alteration made he does not know why. In justice, however, to our correspondents, I must add, that they continued to honour us with their favours, notwithstanding the liberties we took with their compositions, and although it was not in our power to explain the reasons which induced us to take those liberties.

"But, Sir, one never-ceasing fund of amusement to us, was communicating the observations we had occasion to hear, in different societies and different companies, upon The Mirror, and its supposed authors. The supercilious, who despised the paper because they did not know by whom it was written, talked of it as a catchpenny performance, carried on by a set of needy and obscure scribblers. Those who entertained a more favourable opinion of it, were apt to fall into an opposite mistake, and to suppose that The Mirror was the production of all the men of letters in Scotland. This last opinion is not yet entirely exploded, and perhaps has rather gained ground from the favourable reception of The

Mirror since its publication in volumes. The last time I was in London, I happened to step into Mr. Cadell's shop, and while I was amusing myself in turning over the prints in Cook's last Voyage, Lord B came in, and taking up a volume of The Mirror, asked Mr. Cadell, who were the authors of it.

Cadell, who did not suspect that I knew any more of the matter than the Great Mogul, answered, that he could not really mention particular names; but he believed that all the literati of Scotland were concerned in it. Lord B- walked off, satisfied that this was truly the case; and about a week after I heard him say at Lord M- -'s levee, that he was well assured The Mirror was the joint production of all the men of letters in Scotland.

"I will now, Sir, tell you in confidence, that, one of our number excepted, whose writings have long been read with admiration and delight, and whose exquisite pencil every reader of taste and discernment must distinguish in The Mirror, there was not one of our club who ever published a single sentence, or in all likelihood ever would have done it, had it not been for the accidental publication of The Mirror.

"But the most amusing part of the whole was the application of the characters in The Mirror to real life; and I verily believe many a charitable lady and well-disposed gentleman read it with no other view than to find out characters which they might apply to their friends and acquaintances. I dined in a large company the day on which the first letter signed John Homespun was published. At table, Lady asked if anybody had seen The Mirror of that day. Yes,' answered Mrs. it is a charming paper, but there is a great lady in the west, that won't be very fond of it. She is drawn

to the life; I knew her before I had read half the paper.' In the west?' replied Lady

-

"In the south, you mean. I agree with you, that the picture is well drawn; and if you knew the Countess of as well as I have the honour to know her, you could not doubt that she is truly the original.'- Pardon me, ladies,' said a little sharplooking man, in a northern accent, 'I believe you are both mistaken. I have read the paper, and I think the great lady so well pointed out in it, is neither from the west nor from the south, but from my country; at least I am sure we have two or three very like the woman in The Mirror, who do no good to us small folks when we get among them, and are apt to turn the heads of our wives and our daughters;

ay, and of our sons too,' added he, with a significant nod. The ladies, however, would not yield their opinion; and a dispute ensued, which was to me not a little amusing, as I knew that the author had no particular lady in view, either from the west or from the east, from the south or from the north.

"One morning I called upon a lady, and found her reading No. 47 of The Mirror, a paper of mine. 'Well,' said she, 'I know every person described here as well as if they had given us their names at full length.' She then named some of her acquaintance, whose persons and characters were equally unknown to me, and even whose names I never heard mentioned before.

"But the most dangerous application of this sort was that of the character of Sir Bobby Button. Of our forty-five members it may, without offence, be said that some of them are manu quam linguâ promptiores readier at a blow than a word; and we were told, that they seriously intended to make the author of The Mirror speak out, and say, whether, in the