I cannot doubt but that many of your readers feel with me under great
obligations to your very able and obliging correspondents, LORD BRAYBROOKE
and MR. MARKLAND, for the information afforded us upon the subject of the
writers of the Rolliad. And, though not many of them are, probably,
sufficiently old to remember as I do--if not the actual publication of that
work, yet, at least, the excitement produced by its appearance--I apprehend
that the greater number are aware that it really did produce a great
sensation; and that, as with the _Letters of Junius_ before it, and the
_Pursuits of Literature_ subsequently, public curiosity for a long time
busied itself in every direction to detect the able and daring authors.
With this impression, I have been not a little surprised to find, since the
notice of the work in your pages, that I have failed in tracing any account
of it in the two books to which I naturally turned, the _Gentleman's
Magazine_ and Nichols' _Literary Anecdotes_. Very thankful therefore should
I be if any of our correspondents would direct my inquiries to a better
channel, and particularly if they would guide me to information respecting
the authors,--for here I am completely at fault. I allude more especially
to Richardson, Tickell, and General Fitzpatrick; who, I doubt not, were men
of such notoriety and standing in their day, that "not to know them, argues
myself unknown." And yet, humiliating as is this acknowledgment, it is far
better to make it than to remain in ignorance; for the case can surely not
be one "where ignorance is bliss," and where, consequently, "'tis folly to
be wise."
I need hardly beg it to be understood, that, in grouping together the
_Rolliad_, the _Pursuits of Literature_, and _Junius' Letters_, I by no
means intended to place them upon an equality; and here I may inform your
correspondent S. T. D. (what a pity that you do not require every one to
give his name at length!) that the fact of Mr. Matthias being the author of
the second of these works was scarcely made a secret by his family after he
went to Italy. Indeed, for some time previously, it was well known to
myself from what passed at this house, where he was a frequent visitor, and
where I should at any time be happy to give S. T. D. ocular demonstration
of it, by the production of the letters addressed to the {277} "Anonymous
Author of the _Pursuits of Literature_," accompanied in some cases with his
own answers.