I have been making not a few mistakes in Fors lately; and, indeed,
am careless enough in it, not solicitous at all to avoid mistakes;
for being entirely sure of my main ground, and entirely honest in
purpose, I know that I cannot make any mistake which will invalidate
my work, and that any chance error which the third Fors may appoint
for me, is often likely to bring out, in its correction, more good
than if I had taken the pains to avoid it. Here, for instance, is
Dr. Brown's letter, which I should not have had, but for my having
confused George's Street with George's Square, and having too shortly
generalized my experience of modern novel readers; and it tells me, and
you, something about Scott and Dickens which is of the greatest use.
"My dear Friend,--I am rejoiced to see you upon Scott. It will be a
permanent good, your having broken this ground. But you are wrong
in two things--George's Square is not in the detestable New Town,
it is to the south of the very Old Town, and near the Meadows.
"Then you say 'nobody now will read them' (Miss Edgeworth and Sir
Walter). She is less read than I think she should be, but he is
enormously read--here and in America.
"In the twelve months ending June, 1873, Adam Black and his
sons have sold over 250,000 Waverleys, and I know that when
Dickens--that great master of fun and falsetto--went last to
America, and there was a fury for him and his books, the sale
of them only touched for a short time the ordinary sale of the
Scott Novels, and subsided immensely, soon, the Scotts going
steadily on increasing. Our young 'genteel' girls and boys,
I fear, don't read them as the same class did thirty years ago,
but the readers of them, in the body of the people, are immense,
and you have only to look at the four or five copies of the whole
set in our public libraries to see how they are being read. That
is a beautiful drawing of Chantrey's, and new to me,--very like,
having the simple, childlike look which he had. The skull is
hardly high enough."
A subsequent letter tells me than Dinlay is a big hill in Liddesdale;
and enclosed (search for it being made) the tune of Sour Plums in
Galashiels, of which I will only at present bid you farther observe
that it is the first "touch of the auld bread-winner" that Wandering
Willie plays to Darsie.
Another valued correspondent reminds me that people might get hold
of my having spoken, a good many numbers back, of low sunshine "at
six o'clock on an October morning;" and truly enough it must have
been well on towards seven.
A more serious, but again more profitable, mistake, was made in
the June Fors, by the correspondent (a working man) who sent me
the examination paper, arranged from a Kensington one, from which
I quoted the four questions,--who either did not know, or did not
notice, the difference between St. Matthew and St. Matthias. The
paper had been set in the schools of St. Matthew, and the chairman of
the committee of the schools of St. Matthias wrote to me in violent
indignation--little thinking how greatly pleased I should be to hear
of any school in which Kensington questions were not asked,--or if
asked, were not likely to be answered.
I find even that the St. Matthias children could in all probability
answer the questions I proposed as alternative,--for they have flower
shows, and prizes presented by Bishops, and appear to be quite in
an exemplary phase of education: all of which it is very pleasant
to me to learn. (Apropos of the equivoque between St. Matthew and
St. Matthias, another correspondent puts me in mind of the promise
I made to find out for you who St. Pancras was. I did; but did not
much care to tell you--for I had put him with St. Paul only because
both their names began with P; and found that he was an impertinent
youth of sixteen, who ought to have been learning to ride and swim,
and took to theology instead, and was made a martyr of, and had that
mock-Greek church built to his Christian honour in Mary-le-bone. I
have no respect whatever for boy or girl martyrs;--we old men know
the value of the dregs of life: but young people will throw the whole
of it away for a freak, or in a pet at losing a toy.)
I suppose I shall next have a fiery letter abjuring Kensington from
the committee of the schools of St. Matthew:--nothing could possibly
give me greater pleasure. I did not, indeed, intend for some time
to give you any serious talk about Kensington, and then I meant to
give it you in large print--and at length; but as this matter has
been 'forced' upon me (note the power of the word Fors in the first
syllable of that word) I will say a word or two now.
I have lying beside me on my table, in a bright orange cover, the
seventh edition of the 'Young Mechanic's Instructor; or, Workman's
Guide to the various Arts connected with the Building Trades; showing
how to strike out all kinds of Arches and Gothic Points, to set out
and construct Skew Bridges; with numerous Illustrations of Foundations,
Sections, Elevations, etc. Receipts, Rules, and Instructions in the art
of Casting, Modelling, Carving, Gilding, Dyeing, Staining, Polishing,
Bronzing, Lacquering, Japanning, Enamelling, Gasfitting, Plumbing,
Glazing, Painting, etc. Jewellers' Secrets, Miscellaneous Receipts,
Useful Tables, etc., and a variety of useful information designed
specially for the Working Mechanic.--London: Brodie and Middleton,
79, Long Acre; and all Booksellers in Town and Country. Price, 2s. 6d.'
From pages 11, 20, and 21 of the introduction to this work, I quote
the following observations on St. Paul's, the Nineveh sculptures,
and the Houses of Parliament.