[‘Harlequin Changes in this Drama of Faction’]

First published Edinburgh Saturday Post, 8 September 1827, p. 140. Never reprinted. This article appeared on the fourth page, beneath the paper’s masthead and date. Like most leaders in the Post, it would have been written in haste on Saturday evening, during the hour or so before going to press. On the same page of this issue, just above the masthead, Peterkin announced his resignation; the ‘management’ of the Post, he added, ‘is now in more able hands; and it will be conducted on the same [political] principles as heretofore’ (untitled note (signed ‘A. P.’), p. 140). At the time of Stuart Tave’s edition in 1966, it was not known that De Quincey replaced Peterkin as editor for the months of September and October 1827.