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A voluminous paper war followed this fight, stimulated by “the historian,” who at this period edited a weekly, called Pierce Egan’s Life in London. The “milling correspondence,” as it was termed, became as verbose and inconsequential as diplomatic circular notes or the “protocols” on the Schleswig-Holstein question. Langan, Spring, Tom Reynolds, Josh. Hudson, and Cribb, by their amanuenses, or self-appointed secretaries, figured in print in what they would have called in their vernacular, the “’fending and proving” line; but the great gun was Tom Reynolds, primed and charged by Pierce himself. The very reading of his letters, and weary reading they are, reminds us of the Bastard Falconbridge’s description of the magniloquent citizen of Angiers:—

“He speaks plain cannon, fire, and smoke, and bounce;

He gives the bastinado with his tongue;

Our ears are cudgelled; not a word of his

But buffets better than a fist of France.

Zounds! I was never so bethump’d with words

Since I first called my brother’s father ‘dad.’”