Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/389

 JOHN WILSON 373 The young Magazine rushed into the battle ramping and raging, bellowing and roaring, full of tropical ardour and savagery, neither taking nor giving quarter ; and in the dust and confusion of the fray, and the bewilderment of manifold mystifications, unscrupulous impersonations, fantastic disguises, interchanges of armour and arms, it was impossible for the spectators clearly and surely to discern who was the captain of the host and who were the warriors. If their own defiant proclamation could be trusted,* there were some strange wild beasts in this deluge of anthropo- phagi suddenly let loose upon Whigs, Radicals, Ben- thamites, Joe-Humists, Cockneys, Heretics, haverers, haverils, gouks, sumphs, e tutti quanti ; for this ram- pageous Apocalyptic menagerie had constituted them- selves the heraldic supporters of the Nobility, the bodyguard of the Throne, the watch-dogs of the quiet sanctities of the Altar — around which they yelped and barked day and night. In the "Ancient Chaldee Manuscript " are specified some of the principal cham- pions of "the man in plain apparel, which had his camp in the place of Princes, whose name was as it had been the colour of ebony, and whose number was the number of a maiden, when the days of the years of her virginity have expired" (Blackwood, 17 Princes Street). " And the first which came was after the likeness of a beautiful leopard, from the valley of the palm-trees, whose going forth was comely wood, October 1817 ; quickly suppressed, so that few sets contain it ; but republished as appendix to the " Noctes," in vol. iv. of the twelve- volume edition of the Works of Professor Wilson, edited by his son-in-law, the late Professor J. F. Ferrier. (Blackwood, 1855.)
 * " Translation from an ancient Chaldee Manuscript," Black-