The Tattlesnivel Bleater

The pen is taken in hand on the present occasion, by a private
individual (not wholly unaccustomed to literary composition), for
the exposure of a conspiracy of a most frightful nature; a
conspiracy which, like the deadly Upas-tree of Java, on which the
individual produced a poem in his earlier youth (not wholly devoid
of length), which was so flatteringly received (in circles not
wholly unaccustomed to form critical opinions), that he was
recommended to publish it, and would certainly have carried out the
suggestion, but for private considerations (not wholly unconnected
with expense).

The individual who undertakes the exposure of the gigantic
conspiracy now to be laid bare in all its hideous deformity, is an
inhabitant of the town of Tattlesnivel--a lowly inhabitant, it may
be, but one who, as an Englishman and a man, will ne'er abase his
eye before the gaudy and the mocking throng.

Tattlesnivel stoops to demand no championship from her sons. On an
occasion in History, our bluff British monarch, our Eighth Royal
Harry, almost went there. And long ere the periodical in which this
exposure will appear, had sprung into being, Tattlesnivel had
unfurled that standard which yet waves upon her battlements. The
standard alluded to, is THE TATTLESNIVEL BLEATER, containing the
latest intelligence, and state of markets, down to the hour of going
to press, and presenting a favourable local medium for advertisers,
on a graduated scale of charges, considerably diminishing in
proportion to the guaranteed number of insertions.

It were bootless to expatiate on the host of talent engaged in
formidable phalanx to do fealty to the Bleater. Suffice it to
select, for present purposes, one of the most gifted and (but for
the wide and deep ramifications of an un-English conspiracy) most
rising, of the men who are bold Albion's pride. It were needless,
after this preamble, to point the finger more directly at the LONDON
CORRESPONDENT OF THE TATTLESNIVEL BLEATER.

On the weekly letters of that Correspondent, on the flexibility of
their English, on the boldness of their grammar, on the originality
of their quotations (never to be found as they are printed, in any
book existing), on the priority of their information, on their
intimate acquaintance with the secret thoughts and unexecuted
intentions of men, it would ill become the humble Tattlesnivellian
who traces these words, to dwell. They are graven in the memory;
they are on the Bleater's file. Let them be referred to.

But from the infamous, the dark, the subtle conspiracy which spreads
its baleful roots throughout the land, and of which the Bleater's
London Correspondent is the one sole subject, it is the purpose of
the lowly