* * * * *
At length then have I liberty to yawn--a freedom whereof doubtless my
readers have long been liverymen: I have written myself and my inkstand
dry as Rosamond's pond; my brain is relieved, recreated, emptied; I go
no longer heavily, as one that mourneth; and with gleeful face can I
assure you that your author's mind is once again as light as his heart:
but when crowding fancies come thick upon it, they bow it, and break it,
and weary it, as clouds of pigeons settling gregariously on a
trans-Atlantic forest; and when those thronging thoughts are comfortably
fixed on paper, one feels, as an apple-tree may be supposed to feel, all
the difference between the heavy down-dragging crop of autumn and the
winged aerial blossom of sweet spring-tide. An involuntary author, just
eased for the time of ever-exacting and accumulating notions, can
sympathize with holiday-making Atlas, chuckling over a chance so lucky
as the transfer of his pack to Hercules; and can comprehend the relief
it must have been to that foolish sage in Rasselas, when assured that he
no longer was afflicted with the care of governing a galaxy of worlds.
Some people are born to talk, with an incessant tongue illustrating
perpetuity of motion in the much-abused mouth; some to indite solid
continuous prose, with a labour-loving pen ever tenanting the hand; but
I clearly was born a zooelogical anomaly, _with a pen in my mouth_, a
sort of serpent-tongue. Heaven give it wisdom, and put away its poison!
Such being my character from birth, a paper-gossip, a writer from the
cradle, I ought not demurely to apologize for nature's handicraft, nor
excuse this light affliction of chattering in print.--Who asks you to
read it?--Neither let me cast reflections on your temper or your
intellect by too humble exculpation of this book of many themes; or must
I then regard you as those sullen children in the market-place, whom
piping cannot please, and sorrow cannot soften?
And now, friend, I've done. Require not, however shrewd your guess, my
acknowledgment of this brain-child; forgive all unintended harms; supply
what is lacking in my charities; politically, socially, authorially,
think that I bigotize in theoretic fun, but am incarnate Tolerance for
practical earnest. And so, giving your character fairer credit than if I
feared you as one of those captious cautious people who make a man
offender for an ill-considered word; commending to the cordial warmth of
Humanity my unhatched score and more of book-eggs, to perfect which I
need an Eccaleobion of literature; and scorning, as heartily as any
Sioux chief, to prolong palaver, when I have nothing more to say; suffer
me thus courteously to take of you my leave. And forasmuch as Lord
Chesterfield recommends an exit to be heralded by a pungent speech, let
me steal from quaint old Norris the last word wherewith I trouble you:
"These are my thoughts; I might have spun them out into a greater
length, but that I think a little plot of ground, thick-sown, is better
than a great field, which for the most part of it lieth fallow."