MR. BROWN AND THE COUNTY BRIDGE.
[TO TUR EDITOR OF THR SPECTATOR:1 do not see that it matters much whether the couplet about the bridge was Mr. Richard's or your own. The fact remains that he amused Parliament with it, and that you pub- lished it in your paper. Nor can I help taking exception to your flippant dismissal of the subject with a joke about animosity towards a myth. Were you in my place, you would know that the treatment of which I complain is anything but mythical. I ask you to withdraw, as a matter of courtesy and justice, from the position you have taken against me.—I am, Sir, &c.,
DAVID A. BROWN.
P.S.—Goldsmith tells us that a false report, "when once supplied, can never be destroyed." A Liverpool paper, called the Daily Post, has already begun to be facetious at my expense, in consequence of what you have said. Thus, through obscure channels a libel spreads, to the ultimate ruin of its victim. How careful all of us should be to verify everything before we publish it ! D. A. B.
[We never made any charge or "took any position" against Mr. Brown, and cannot, therefore, withdraw from any. Mr. Richard's couplet, reported in twenty journals beside our own, which we believed (mistakenly) to be at least a hundred years old, made a charge, which, however, we never endorsed. We have no doubt that Mr. Brown's account of the facts is quite correct, but have no knowledge at all of the matter except what his statement gives us. We can insert no further letters on the subject.—En. Spectator.]
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