[Two Words on John Ramsay M’culloch]

First published Edinburgh Saturday Post, 22 March 1828, p. 364. Never reprinted. This very brief note appeared in the ‘to correspondents’ section, above the paper’s masthead on the fourth page. De Quincey seems to have written several such notices in the Post at this time, including the previous week’s reply to ‘Antehellenistes’ (see above, p. 299). Like that earlier notice, this one has the humour, and the ridicule of a contemporary Scots authority, which seem to be almost unique to De Quincey, among the contributors to the Post. (The only exception appears to be George Milligan, whose complaints against Scottish universities were an anomaly among the paper’s Scottish journalists; see above, pp. 298–9.) Other signs here include the dash, the short rhetorical question, the deliberate rudeness, and the conversational tone, all of which point to De Quincey rather than the Reverend Crichton, or anyone else at the Post.