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LETTER FROM TOMKINS-BAGMAN verSUS PEDLAR.

TO CHRISTOPHER NORTH, ESQ.

DEAR AND RESPECTED SIR, THE kind interest which on many occasions you displayed in my welfare and pursuits, had but ill prepared me for the severe blow which my private and professional feelings have lately received at your hands. I cannot bring myself to enter, even under this provocation, on a direct controversy with one whom I have long regarded as a friend and a father; but I appeal to your sense of justice to insert in the pages of Maga the following expostulation, addressed to another party concerned, which has long lain by me. nearly in its present shape, but which can now no longer be withheld from bursting into publicity, at once to convince yourself of the shameful partiality which you have shown for the follower of a different line of commercial business, and to overwhelm with confusion the presumption and pitiful competitor who has seduced you into so groundless a preference. Referring you to your late observations on Mr. Wordsworth's Excursion, and your attempted vindication of that gentleman's choice of a hero, I remain, dear sir, ever yours with much respect, after all that has passed,

ISAAC TOMKINS.

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losophical poem; and if the great genius of that gentleman had not conferred on you a factitious, but as I confidently anticipate, a short-lived fame, to be now speedily converted into a less honourable but more enduring notoriety. I long ago asked Mr. Jeffrey to allow me to put an extinguisher on your pretensions; but he would not trust me to do it, and undertook to crush you himself. The poor dear man accordingly did his petit possible in that way, and for a time I almost thought the thing was accomplished, at least on the northside of the Sark; but it had not been put on a right footing. The snake was scorched but not killed, and you and your poet again reared your heads aloft like Skiddaw himself, as if nothing had been the matter. Bitterly did I deplore the provoking popularity that seemed gradually pressing upon you, and often did I resolve to deal you a blow that should dispense with the necessity of its own repetition. You might however have been spared from this fate for some further interval, if the late ill-advised eulogium of our friend Mr. North had not made the cup of my resentment flow over in an irrepressible cascade. Christopher, it is plain to me, is in his dotage. He seems now either to be without guile or gall in his crazy composition, or to exert them in the wrong places and on the wrong persons, and to be totally unable to tell the difference between drivel or dulness and sense or sublimity.

Without further preface I proceed to consider upon what grounds the author of the Excursion could adopt you as the prominent figure in that very able composition. The subject leads at once to a question, often asked but seldom answered; Who are you? I shall afterwards in order proceed to consider another question, not so often asked; Who am I? and shall finally draw a comparison between our respective positions, which, if I do not egregiously err, will for ever lay you, Murdoch Macglashan, supine in the dust of your own insignificance, and elevate me, Isaac Tomkins, to a pedestal of popularity more lofty

and conspicuous than any one of us all, whether in the hard or in the soft line, has hitherto been able to attain.

Firstly then, of the first point, Who are you? I was unwilling, Murdoch, to smite you with a sense of degradation in the eyes of Macpherson and his daughter who keep the Highland Bagpipe, and I therefore addressed this letter to you, under the description of Travelling Merchant. Therein I adopted, out of delicacy, the phraseology of your friend Mr. Wordsworth, who speaks of you as a vagrant merchant bent beneath his load? Your title to the appellation of vagrant I am not prepared to contest; on the contrary, I shall be able to fortify your possession of it by some striking proofs. But that you are a merchant I wholly deny. A merchant, Mr. Macglashan, is what you neither are nor can in the least degree understand. The term implies an extent of credit, capital, intelligence, and energy, to which you never could prefer the least pretensions. I am aware that, borrowing the degraded use of the French word marchand, your conntrymen dignify with the name of merchant the most pitiful shopkeeper in the most paltry clachan. But an English merchant scorns to limit his exertions in so narrow a field. His views and transactions embrace the globe itself. He sees with a penetrating eye the whole complexity of commercial relations in every quarter and corner of the world; is ready to supply the wants, and carry off the superfluities of all nations; preserves or restores, like the winds of heaven, an universal equilibrium in the elements of life and happiness, and by his knowledge of exchanges can at any time waft a remittance from Indus to the Pole, with infinite benefit to others and a handsome per centage to himself. These are sublime achievements that you never could aspire to or even dream of. You are no merchant, Murdoch, and you know it. You are, or you were a hawker or pedlar, a packman, or petty chapman. In what estimation, public and private, the species of traffic involved in these terms is and ought to be held will presently appear.

Observe how your profession has been dealt with by the legislature. In a statute of Edward VI. I am indebted to a legal friend for the statements

now to be made, you are classed with tinkers, the very rubbi.h and refuse of mankind. By 5 and 6 Edward VI., c. 21, it is provided, "that no tinker, pedlar, or petty chapman shall wander about from the town where he dwelleth, or exercise the trade of tinker, but such as shall be licensed by two Justices of the Peace or more, under their hands and seals, upon pain of fourteen days' imprisonment."

No doubt this statute was repealed by your countryman, James I., who thought it might bear rather hard upon some of his original subjects; but it shows the status that your brethren held in those days, to which you might have been inclined to look back as to the age of chivalry in your honourable vocation.

Again, by 9 and 10 Will. III. c. 7, a duty of L. 4 per annum was imposed on the licenses of every pedlar, hawker, petty chapman, and other trading person or persons, going from town to town or to other men's houses; and any such person not having or not producing a license when demanded, shall forfeit L5, and for non-payment thereof shall suffer as a common VAGRANT, and be committed to the House of Correction.

By a subsequent act of Geo. III., the duties on licenses of hawkers and pedlars are placed under the management of the Commissioners of Hackney Coaches; and it is farther thereby provided, that every person to whom any such license shall be granted, and who shall trade under colour thereof, shall cause to be written in large capitals upon every pack, box, bag, trunk, &c. in which he shall carry his goods, the words "LICENSED HAWKER."

I have some reason to believe, though I would peril no part of my argument on this point, that for some years you travelled in the North of England without a license, and that this irregularity first brought you in contact with Mr. Wordsworth, in consequence of his connection with the revenue. It was very good-natured in him to deal so handsomely with so doubtful an acquaintance.

Such is the eminent and honourable station to which you may boast of having attained at the acme of your career. Its fitness to form the basis of a poetical or philosophical character must at once be apparent; but on this

subject I reserve my remarks until I have completed my review of your personal history.

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Among the hills of Atholl you were born.' Just so: I know the place perfectly nearly half-way between Dal'nacardoch and Dalwhinnie, the bleak»est, barrenest, stoniest, and stupidest portion of the Perthshire Highlands.Your father, Dugald Macglashan, was a very decent carle, though fond occasionally of the mountain dew. He rented a little croft, which Mr. Wordsworth has correctly described as unproductive slip of rugged ground,' and must with his large family have been in abject poverty. Nothing is said in the poem as to your costume in early life; but it is certain that till twelve years old, you had neither hat to your head, shoes to your feet, nor breeches to your pelvis. In this condition you might have sat for the picture, drawn in another part of the Excursion, of that

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You certainly realized one side of the Frenchman's observation as to the differences of custom-" Par example, on Ilave les mains tous les jours-les pied jamais."

I suspect strongly too, that another feature of Mr. Wordsworth's portrait already noticed, might also apply, and that when any travellers passed by the Highland road, you were to be seen among other imps, running in your blue kilt alongside of the chaise and whinning for a bawbee, the only English word you could then pronounce.

Your attainments in literature must in boyhood have been somewhat limited, if I may judge from probabilities, Gaelic unquestionably was your inother tongue, and would be with difficulty exchanged for the very singular lingua franca which your com

mercial pursuits afterwards compelled you to employ. Any books that you might pick up on the stalls of Pitlochrie or Moulinearn, the nearest town to your abode, would not make a very handsome library; and Mr. Words worth's assertion that, "among the hills, you gazed upon that mighty orb of song, the divine Milton," seems to border on the incredible. Equally startling is the idea that you became an adept in the purer elements of truth involved in lines and numbers-that your triangles were the stars of heaven-and that you often took delight "to measure the altitude of some tall crag that is the eagle's birthplace." Had you ever a quadrant or theodolite for this last operation? I doubt it, and as to your knowledge of figues or numbere, I can only say, that old Jack Jones, of Griffiths and Co., who knew you well, used to tell us in the Commercial Room, that you were as ignorant of the Italian method of book-keeping as a babe at the breast, and never could tell for your life whether cash should be debtor to sundries, or sundries debtor to cash. I may afterwards say something as to the lkelihood of your acquiring the moral, metaphysical, and poetical feelings, which are said to have animated you in your mountain solitudes. My own belief is, that the only strong emotions of which of hunger and thirst or at least of hunyou were then susceptible were those ger, which you must often have experienced on the hill-side in ravenous intensity. Jones used to say that he had seen you sometimes when a lad gnawing at a raw turnip on a cold day with the same relish as if it had been a pine apple in summer. But my own impression is, that your acquaintance with turnip husbandry was derived from a district of country much more to the southward than your own.

Thus reared and accomplished, you commenced that itinerant career, on the dignity of which I have already commented. Whether from your native hills you wandered far' is matter of opinion, but I rather believe that Kinross and Kendal were to you as the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. That in your long wanderings among the rural villages and farms, you saw a good many persons, and had observ ed the history of several families, is unquestionably true. From the national faculty of second sight, or a keen observation of suspicious appearances you had always a sure anticipation o

of your history, I leave you for the present, in order to speak of myself; but you will take notice, that I am not done with you, as I intend to come back on the subject, and consider in detail the whole points in your character and career that bear upon the poetical part that you have been made to play.

I shall not here anticipate, more than is necessary, the interesting particulars of my life, or the origin and progress of my own powers. "Anch' io son pittore." Tomkins too perhaps has composed a long philosophical poem,

marriages and christenings, and with a vulture's scent or sight. I decline entering into the Waterton Controversy, your presence at the burial was infallible. Here indeed your conduct was often far from praiseworthy for on such melancholy occasions it was observed that the price of your ribbons and gown-pieces always rose in proportion to the affliction of the sufferers and your own sympathy with their loss. Indeed, you were ever a knowing fellow, and looked constantly to the main chance. I ask no better proof of this than a passage in which your friend Mr.“ containing views of Man, Nature, Wordsworth has unwittingly let the cat out of the bag. He makes you say, after detailing the very heart-rending story of that poor woman Margaret, that at the mere sight of some springing plants about the place, "those weeds, and the high spear-grass on that wall," you were so reconciled to the idea of her sorrows and death, that you turned away, "and walked along your road in happiness." It is before said that you could afford to suffer, though we never hear of your affording to give Margaret five shillings; and here even your sympathy disappears at a moment's warning. Was this the part of a friendly and sympathetic man who had received such touching acts of kindness from that bereaved and afflicted creature? I suspect not. But in truth, you were then occupied with thoughts which you were too cunning to let Mr. Wordsworth know. You were making a professional application of Virgil's phrase, "primo avulso non deficit alter," though in a different way from what the dentist did. Your notion was this: "Well, Margaret is away, but Martha succeeds. I lose one customer, but there soon comes another!" Even in your strongest perceptions of human grief, you did the thing in the way of business. You observed it, that you might tell it again. Like the penny-a-liners of the newspapers, you collected in your rounds the full particulars, and something more of sad afflictions and moving accidents, that you might repeat them to your next customers, and thereby enhance the price of your wares. Have we forgot Shakspeare's Autolycus? Accordingly, it is admitted, that you pretty well feathered your nest, and are now enjoying a better competency than belongs to many a better man.

Having given this general sketch

and Society, and to be entitled, the
Commercial Traveller, as having for
its principal subject the sensations
and opinions of a Poet, living on the
road, and engaged in business." Whe-
ther and when I shall publish the
whole of this poem, or any portion of
a part of it, needs not now be explain-
ed. But if I am advised to commu-
nicate to the public a prospectus or
sample of it, with Christopher's per-
mission, you shall have an oppor-
tunity of perusing it in the pages of
Maga. For my present purpose, it
is enough that I reveal thus much of
my life: I was born and bred in a
civilized country: I spoke English
from the moment when I could speak
at all: as soon as I could walk I wore
stockings and shoes: and I was early
put into breeches, which I have never
discontinued, except now and then
when Mrs. Tomkins put them on by
mistake; and except further on that
memorable morning which Christopher
has so facetiously recorded as exhibit-
ing my femoral muscles in a defence-
less condition.
I received a good
education in reading and counting
at school, acquiring at the same
time a knowledge of some Latin
words and some Greek letters. I after-
wards served for some months as clerk
in a coach-office, and was allowed
occasionally to drive a few stages out
of town, to give me a strong whip-
hand. I was finally rounded off with
a session of academical study in the
metropolis of your own country, where
I also distinguished myself greatly as
a member of the Spouter's Union.
Fully prepared by this curriculum of
instruction, wide awake and up to
every thing, with an eye like an ar-
row, and a tongue like a tavern bell,
I entered on that honourable profes-
sion for which I was all along design-

ed, and have now for about forty years carried the bag in various grades and departments, with some emolument to myself, and great satisfaction to the public.

Now Christopher, for here an apostrophe to you breaks involuntarily from my pen-look on this picture, and on that, and repent in sackcloth and ashes the grievous wrong you have done to me, and your own judgment. In your September Number, you thus write as to the exclusive fit ness of the Pedlar for the poetical hero of a work like the Excursion.

"What would you rather have had the Sage in the Excursion to have been? The Senior fellow of a College? A Head? A retired Judge ? An ex-Lord Chancellor A Nabob? A banker? A Millionaire ? or, at once to condescend on Individuals, Natus Consumere Fruges, Esquire? or the Honourable Custos Rotulorum?" Where, Christopher, were you located when you thus wrote ? You seem to have turned over the Oxford Calendar, the Red Book, and the Edinburgh Directory. But was PIGOTT not at hand? Was he not as usual in the Sanctum, or were you really writing among the mountains at the moment? It must have been so for a glance at his portly volumes in your philosophical soul, would have been followed by a flash-like perception of the truth. But oh! even in absence of Pigott, could Christopher forget his Isaac-North, his Tomkins, the Master of Maga, his own son, THE BAGMAN.

Yes, Christopher, and you Macglashan, to whom I once more return, the question propounded as to the appropriate hero of the Excursion should have been thus answered. The Pedlar should have been discardedthe Bagman should have been installed in his place. How much more fitti gly, how much more gracefully, would he have filled it!

I proc ed to compare in detail the principal points in our respective conditions that affect the question of fitness for a poetical character.

I. Early Life and Education.

If there had been nothing else to deter Mr. Wordsworth from the choice which he made in your favour, he might, I think, have been moved by the consideration that he must thereby forego the praise of originality. This is not the first time that the development of intellect and imagination in a humble mountain-boy has been made the subject of poetry, and of good poetry too.

We have most of us read Beattie's Minstrel, and some of us may return to that poem even after reading the Excursion, without feeling much disenchantment of the old charm which it exerted over us. Nay, the Minstrel may give us greater pleasure than ever from our considering it as the original of so admirable an imitation. So closely has the idea of Edwin been followed by Mr. Wordsworth in your own history, that I think at least some acknowledgment was due to the source from which the conception must have been derived. The two stories coincide in almost every particular. The country, Scotlandthe locality, a mountainous districtthe youth's profession, pastoral-the forms of nature represented as the means of exciting and spiritualizing his mind-and the aim of it all to illustrate the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties.' Let any one closely compare the passages that follow, and ask whether the balance of praise may not be held pretty equally be tween them, considering at least that the one last quoted was the first written. They are both admirable, and certainly your friend's is the more subtle and ethereal; but I suspect the general feeling would back the dead poet against the living one.

WORDSWORTH.

-He had felt the power

Of Nature, and already was prepared
By his intense conceptions, to receive
Deeply the lesson of deep love, which he
Whom Nature, by whatever means, has taught

To foel intensely, cannot but receive.

Such was the Boy-but for the growing youth What soul was his when from the naked top Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun Rise up and bathe the world in light! He looked

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