THE AUTHOR REQUESTS THE READER NOT TO BE IMPATIENT. SHEWS FROM LORD
SHAFTESBURY AT WHAT RATE A JUDICIOUS WRITER OUGHT TO PROCEED.
DISCLAIMS PROLIXITY FOR HIMSELF, AND GIVES EXAMPLES OF IT IN A GERMAN
PROFESSOR, A JEWISH RABBI, AND TWO COUNSELLORS, ENGLISH AND AMERICAN.
_Pand._ He that will have a cake out of the wheat, must tarry the
grinding.
_Troilus._ Have I not tarried?
_Pand._ Ay, the grinding; but you must tarry the bolting.
_Troilus._ Have I not tarried?
_Pand._ Ay, the bolting; but you must tarry the leavening.
_Troilus._ Still have I tarried.
_Pand._ Aye, to the leavening: but here's yet in the word hereafter,
the kneading, the making of the cake, the heating of the oven, and the
baking; nay, you must stay the cooling too; or you may chance to burn
your lips.
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.
I passed over fourteen years of the Doctor's boyhood and adolescence,
as it may be remembered was stated in the twenty-fifth Chapter; but I
must not in like manner pass over the years that intervened between
his first acquaintance with Deborah Bacon, and the happy day whereon
the bells of St. George's welcomed her to Doncaster as his bride. It
would be as inconsistent with my design to pretermit this latter
portion of his life, as it would have been incompatible with my limits
to have recorded the details of the former, worthy to be recorded as
they were. If any of my readers should be impatient on this occasion,
and think that I ought to have proceeded to the marriage without
delay, or at least to the courtship, I must admonish them in the words
of a Turkish saying, that “hurry comes from the Devil, and slow
advancing from Allah.”—“Needs must go when the Devil drives,” says the
proverb: but the Devil shall never drive me. I will take care never to
go at such a rate, “as if haste had maimed speed by overrunning it at
starting.”
“The just composer of a legitimate piece,” says Lord Shaftesbury, “is
like an able traveller, who exactly measures his journey, considers
his ground, premeditates his stages and intervals of relaxation and
intention, to the very conclusion of his undertaking, that he happily
arrives where he first proposed at setting out. He is not presently
upon the spur, or in his full career, but walks his steed leisurely
out of the stable, settles himself in his stirrups, and when fair road
and season offer, puts on perhaps to a round trot, thence into a
gallop, and after a while takes up. As down, or meadow, or shady lane
present themselves, he accordingly suits his pace, favours his
palfrey, and is sure not to bring him puffing, and in a heat, into his
last inn.”
Yes, Reader,
——matter needless, of importless burden[1]
may as little be expected to flow from the slit of my pen, as to
“divide the lips” of wise Ulysses. On the other hand what is needful,
what is weighty in its import, let who will be impatient, must not be
left unsaid.
_varie fila a varie tele
Uopo mi son, che tutte ordire intendo._[2]
[Footnote 1: TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.]
[Footnote 2: ARIOSTO.]
It is affirmed by the angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, that of
corporeal things the quantity is in proportion to the quality, that
which is best being always in the same degree the greatest. “Thus in
this our universe,” he says “the water is more than the earth, the air
more than the water, the fire more than the air: the first heaven
larger than the sphere of fire, the second than the first, the third
than the second; and so they proceed increasing to the tenth sphere,
and to the empyrean, which is, _inestimabilis et incomparabilis
magnitudinis_.”
Upon the principle which this greatest of the schoolmen has assumed, I
leave the reader to infer what would be the probable and proper extent
of the present opus, were I to indulge my genius and render justice to
the subject.
To make it exceed in length the histories of Sir Charles Grandison and
of Clarissa Harlowe, or the bulkier romances of Calprenede and the
Scuderys, it would not be necessary to handle it in the manner of a
lawyer who, having no more argument than would lie in a nut-shell,
wire-draws it and hammers at it, and hammers at it and wire-draws it,
and then wire-draws it and hammers at it again, like a lecturer who is
exhibiting the infinite ductility of gold.
“What a gift,” says Fuller, “had John Halsebach, Professor at Vienna,
in tediousness, who being to expound the Prophet Isaiah to his
auditors, read twenty-one years on the first chapter, and yet finished
it not!” Mercator, in the description of Austria in his Atlas, has
made mention of this Arch-Emperor of the Spintexts.
If I had been in John Halsebach's place, my exposition of that first
chapter would have been comprized in one lecture, of no hungry or
sleepy duration. But if John Halsebach were in mine, he would have
filled more volumes than Rees's Cyclopedia with his account of Daniel
Dove.
And yet Rabbi Chananiah may contest the palm with the Vienna
Professor. It is recorded of him that when he undertook to write a
commentary upon part of the Prophet Ezekiel, he required the Jews to
supply him with three hundred tons of oil for the use of his lamp,
while he should be engaged in it.
It is well known upon one of the English circuits that a leading
barrister once undertook to speak while an express went twenty miles
to bring back a witness whom it was necessary to produce upon the
trial. But what is this to the performance of an American counsellor,
who upon a like emergency held the judge and the jury by their ears
for three mortal days! He indeed was put to his wits end, for words
wherewith to fill up the time; and he introduced so many truisms, and
argued at the utmost length so many indisputable points, and
expatiated so profusely upon so many trite ones, that Judge Marshal
(the biographer of Washington and the most patient of listeners,) was
so far moved at last as to say, “Mr. Such a one!—(addressing him by
his name in a deliberate tone of the mildest reprehension,)—there are
some things with which the Court should be supposed to be acquainted.”
I can say with Burton, _malo decem potius verba, decies repetita
licet, abundare, quam unum desiderari._ “To say more than a man can
say, I hold it not fit to be spoken: but to say what a man ought to
say,—there,”—with Simon the tanner of Queenborough,—“I leave you.”