Salmagundi; or, The whim-whams and opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, esq. [pseud.] and others. By William Irving, James Kirke Paulding and Washington Irving. Printed from the original ed., with a preface and notes by Evert A. Duyckinck.

86 SALMAGUNDI.
This modern mounter of Pegasus,
This clumsy jolter of Jackasses,9
Who, now the poet's dray horse starts on,
Anon, the gibbet hurdle carts on,
"' unpack'd his heart with words,
And fell a cursing-like a very drab!
A scullion!"
He has given us a most woeful scolding through some eight or nine
columns, and plainly proved that our work was not worth a fig, because
" Salmagundi" had been heretofore given as a title to another workLauncelot Langstaff was evidently copied from Isaac Bickerstaff, because
they both ended with staff-" Whim-Whams" was the same as "FlimFlams "-" Will Wizard" was taken from-the lord knows where; Wintry was accidentally mispelled or misprinted Wintery, and " Weakly"
was borrowed from his own Weakly productions. Oh, Midas, Midas,
how thine ears do lootn through the fog of thy writings. When a man
of the Doctor's gumption can write nine columns against our work, and
discover no greater faults, we may well be vain-were we to criticise our
own writings, they would stand a much poorer chance. In spite of the
Doctor's crustiness we still love him in our hearts-he may scold like an
old woman, but we know it all arises from that excessive irritability commoil to all men who have " written a book," and particularly a book of doggerel rhymes. We again assure him of our perfect good will toward himself and his most amiable offspring, that delectable pair of twin brothers,
Terrible Tractoration and Democracy Unveiled. May the whole world in
general, and posterity in particular, know the proper distinction between
Iludibrastic and Doggerel, and acquit the Doctor from the imputation
meanly levelled against him by sundry nincoms of imitating Hudibras.
We are sorry that he should ever have been thought capable of descending to be a copyist, and we challenge the whole world to deny that the
Doctor's verse is doggerel, genuine broken winded, rickety doggerel,
whatever his enemies may insist to the contrary. The Doctor's waggery,
however, like that of many other double-headed wits, seems often to
have been taken by the wrong end. On the first appearance of his Terri