Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

yron's autobiography. 493
No man, you will tell me, is bound to publish what may be
deemed libellous ;
but this is a reason for delaying, not destroying.
Libels are things of a lifetime, and like harsh wine grow
mild by keeping : the lapse of a few years takes out their sting.
Even the death -doing gum of the Mexican Indians grows
harmless in a twelvemonth or two. The character of Justice
Shallow, when vrritten, was a bitter libel upon that worthy
knight Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote Park, near Stratford-on-
Avon, Warwickshire (whom by the way it has immortalised).
But would that have been a valid reason for burning " Henry
the Fourth " and the " Merry Wives of Windsor " ? The author
of the ' Twopenny Postbag ' will surely never say that. What
Burn Shallow and Slender and Bardolph and Pistol, and Dr
Caius and Sir Hugh Evans, and Ford and Page and Poins and
Dame Quickly, and Doll and Prince Hal—burn Falstaff and
" all his company along with him " ? No ! not for all the Lucies
from Adam downwards.
Time, however, and space w^ould fail were we to
attempt to record the Johnstons and Thomsons and
Hichardsons, the group of Irish recruits under the
banner of Maginn, or the few genteeler and more
cultured Englishmen, who contributed each man his
article, his tale, his piece of new political discussion,
his copy of verses, most of them all and every one of
these items, to the always appreciative but by no
means always laudatory ' Maga.' They all consented
to the rejection of their papers, when it happened,
with the most remarkable magnanimity. They all pro-
tested at the beginning, and some even to the end, of
the connection, their complete indifference to remuner-
ation ;
though most, I confess, claimed it after a while
with great regularity, and were even capable of fighting
for a little more with a vehemence not unworthy
of Grub Street. I find few women's names among this
large and changing group. Mrs Hemans and Miss
!