"Those squeeze-farthing and hoard-penny ignoramus doctors, with
several great personages who formed excuses for not accepting my
books; or they would receive them, but give nothing for them; or else
deny they had them, or remembered anything of them; and so gave me
nothing for my last present of books, though they kept them _gratis et
ingratiis_.
"But his Grace of the Dutch extraction in Holland (said to be akin to
Mynheer Vander B--nck) had a peculiar grace in receiving my present of
books and odes, which, being bundled up together with a letter and ode
upon his Graceship, and carried in by his porter, I was bid to call
for an answer five years hence. I asked the porter what he meant by
that? I suppose, said he, four or five days hence; but it proved five
or six months after, before I could get any answer, though I had writ
five or six letters in French with fresh odes upon his Graceship, and
an account where I lived, and what noblemen had accepted of my
present. I attended about the door three or four times a week all that
time constantly from twelve to four or five o'clock in the evening;
and walking under the fore windows of the parlours, once that time his
and her Grace came after dinner to stare at me, with open windows and
shut mouths, but filled with fair water, which they spouted with so
much dexterity that they twisted the water through their teeth and
mouth-skrew, to flash near my face, and yet just to miss me, though my
nose could not well miss the natural flavour of the orange-water
showering so very near me. Her Grace began the water-work, but not
very gracefully, especially for an English lady of her description,
airs, and qualities, to make a stranger her spitting-post, who had
been guilty of no other offence than to offer her husband some
writings.--His Grace followed, yet first stood looking so wistfully
towards me, that I verily thought he had a mind to throw me a guinea
or two for all these indignities, and two or three months' then
sleeveless waiting upon him--and accordingly I advanced to address his
Grace to remember the poor author; but, instead of an answer, he
immediately undams his mouth, out fly whole showers of lymphatic
rockets, which had like to have put out my mortal eyes."
Still he was not disheartened, and still applied for his bundle of
books, which were returned to him at length unopened, with "half a
guinea upon top of the cargo," and "with a desire to receive no more.
I plucked up courage, murmuring within myself--
'Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito.'"
He sarcastically observes,
"As I was still jogging on homewards, I thought that a great many were
called _their Graces_, not for any grace or favour they had truly
deserved with God or man, but for the same reason of contraries, that
the _Parcae_ or Destinies, were so called, because they spared none, or
were not truly the _Parcae, quia non parcebant_."
Our indigent and indignant author, by the faithfulness of his
representations, mingles with his anger some ludicrous scenes of
literary mendicity.
"I can't choose (now I am upon the fatal subject) but make one
observation or two more upon the various rencontres and adventures I
met withall, in presenting my books to those who were likely to accept
of them for their own information, or for that of helping a poor
scholar, or for their own vanity or ostentation.
"Some parsons would hollow to raise the whole house and posse of the
domestics to raise a poor _crown_; at last all that flutter ends in
sending Jack or Tom out to change a guinea, and then 'tis reckoned
over half-a-dozen times before the fatal crown can be picked out,
which must be taken as it is given, with all the parade of almsgiving,
and so to be received with all the active and passive ceremonial of
mendication and alms-receiving--as if the books, printing and paper,
were worth nothing at all, and as if it were the greatest charity for
them to touch them or let them be in the house; 'For I shall never
read them,' says one of the five-shilling-piece chaps; 'I have no time
to look in them,' says another; ''Tis so much money lost,' says a
grave dean; 'My eyes being so bad,' said a bishop, 'that I can scarce
read at all.' 'What do you want with me?' said another; 'Sir, I
presented you the other day with my _Athenae Britannicae_, being the
last part published.' 'I don't want books, take them again; I don't
understand what they mean.' 'The title is very plain,' said I, 'and
they are writ mostly in English.' 'I'll give you a crown for both the
volumes.' 'They stand me, sir, in more than that, and 'tis for a bare
subsistence I present or sell them; how shall I live?' 'I care not a
farthing for that; live or die, 'tis all one to me.' 'Damn my master!'
said Jack, ''twas but last night he was commending your books and your
learning to the skies; and now he would not care if you were starving
before his eyes; nay, he often makes game at your clothes, though he
thinks you the greatest scholar in England.'"
Such was the life of a learned mendicant author! The scenes which are
here exhibited appear to have disordered an intellect which had never
been firm; in vain our author attempted to adapt his talents to all
orders of men, still "To the crazy ship all winds are contrary."