[455] He undertook a vindication of the Cockney School in a series of four articles, in which he pointed out the "mean insincerity," the "vulgar slander," the "mouthing cant," the "shabby spite," the falsehoods and the recantations of Blackwood's. The description of the conditions, under which Scott pictured the articles of his enemies to have been written, smacks of the mocking humor of _Blackwood's_ itself: "a redolency of Leith-ale, and tobacco smoke, which floats about all the pleasantry in question,--giving one the idea of its facetious articles having been written on the slopped table of a tavern parlour in the back-wynd, after the _convives_ had retired, and left the author to solitude, pipe-ashes, and the dregs of black-strap."
[456] Published in Edinburgh in 1820 and signed by "An American Scotchman."
[458] The School was thus described in Blackwood's: "The chief constellations, in this poetical firmament, consist of led captains, and clerical hangers-on, whose pleasure, and whose business, it is, to celebrate in tuneful verse, the virtues of some angelic patron, who keeps a good table, and has interest with the archbishop, or the India House. Verily they have their reward." In other words this group was composed of diners-out or parasites, and sycophants for livings and military appointments.
[462] C. C. Clarke, _Recollections of Writers_, p. 147.
[464] _Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon_, p. 349.
[465] Dowden, _Life of Shelley_, II, p. 302.
[468] _Life in Poetry: Law in Taste_, pp. 21-23.
[475] _Life, Letters and Table Talk of Benjamin Robert Haydon_, p. 69.
[476] _Blackwood's_, May, 1823, pp. 558-566.
[477] _Memoirs and Correspondence of Coventry Patmore_, I, p. 23.
[479] _St. James Magazine_, XXXV, p. 387 ff.
[481] _Letters and Journals_, V, pp. 587-590. March 25, 1821.
[482] _Ibid._, V, pp. 362-363. September 12, 1821.
[483] _Letters of Timothy Tickler, Esq._, July, 1823.
[486] Daniel Maclise, _A Gallery of Illustrious Literary Characters_ (1830-1838). London, n. d., p. 132.
[487] William Dorling, _Memoirs of Dora Greenwell_, London, 1885, p. 75.
[489] This accusation has been made still more recently by Mr. Palgrave, who speaks of the "slipshod morality of _Rimini_ and _Hero_." _Poetical Works of John Keats_, p. 263.