Do not admire, that, notwithstanding the distance and ceremony of your
address, I return an answer in the terms of familiarity. The truth
is, your origin and native country are better known to me than even to
yourself. You derive your respectable parentage, if I am not greatly
mistaken, from a land which has afforded much pleasure, as well as
profit, to those who have traded to it successfully,--I mean that part
of the _terra incognita_ which is called the province of Utopia. Its
productions, though censured by many (and some who use tea and tobacco
without scruple) as idle and unsubstantial luxuries, have nevertheless,
like many other luxuries, a general acceptation, and are secretly
enjoyed even by those who express the greatest scorn and dislike of
them in public. The dram-drinker is often the first to be shocked at the
smell of spirits--it is not unusual to hear old maiden ladies declaim
against scandal--the private book-cases of some grave-seeming men would
not brook decent eyes--and many, I say not of the wise and learned,
but of those most anxious to seem such, when the spring-lock of their
library is drawn, their velvet cap pulled over their ears, their feet
insinuated into their turkey slippers, are to be found, were their
retreats suddenly intruded upon, busily engaged with the last new novel.
I have said, the truly wise and learned disdain these shifts, and
will open the said novel as avowedly as they would the lid of their
snuff-box. I will only quote one instance, though I know a hundred.
Did you know the celebrated Watt of Birmingham, Captain Clutterbuck? I
believe not, though, from what I am about to state, he would not have
failed to have sought an acquaintance with you. It was only once my
fortune to meet him, whether in body or in spirit it matters not.
There were assembled about half a score of our Northern Lights, who had
amongst them, Heaven knows how, a well-known character of your country,
Jedediah Cleishbotham. This worthy person, having come to Edinburgh
during the Christmas vacation, had become a sort of lion in the place,
and was lead in leash from house to house along with the guisards, the
stone-eater, and other amusements of the season, which “exhibited their
unparalleled feats to private family-parties, if required.” Amidst this
company stood Mr. Watt, the man whose genius discovered the means of
multiplying our national resources to a degree perhaps even beyond
his own stupendous powers of calculation and combination; bringing the
treasures of the abyss to the summit of the earth--giving the feeble arm
of man the momentum of an Afrite--commanding manufactures to arise, as
the rod of the prophet produced water in the desert--affording the means
of dispensing with that time and tide which wait for no man, and of
sailing without that wind which defied the commands and threats of
Xerxes himself.
[Footnote: Probably the ingenious author alludes to the national adage:
The king said sail,
But the wind said no.
Our schoolmaster (who is also a land surveyor) thinks this whole passage
refers to Mr. Watt's improvements on the steam engine.--_Note by Captain
Clutterbuck_.]
This potent commander of the elements--this abridger of time and
space--this magician, whose cloudy machinery has produced a change on
the world, the effects of which, extraordinary as they are, are perhaps
only now beginning to be felt--was not only the most profound man
of science, the most successful combiner of powers and calculator of
numbers as adapted to practical purposes,--was not only one of the
most generally well-informed,--but one of the best and kindest of human
beings.
There he stood, surrounded by the little band I have mentioned of
Northern literati, men not less tenacious, generally speaking, of
their own fame and their own opinions, than the national regiments are
supposed to be jealous of the high character which they have won upon
service. Methinks I yet see and hear what I shall never see or hear
again. In his eighty-fifth year, the alert, kind, benevolent old man,
had his attention alive to every one's question, his information at
every one's command.
His talents and fancy overflowed on every subject. One gentleman was a
deep philologist--he talked with him on the origin of the alphabet as if
he had been coeval with Cadmus; another a celebrated critic,--you would
have said the old man had studied political economy and belles-lettres
all his life,--of science it is unnecessary to speak, it was his own
distinguished walk. And yet, Captain Clutterbuck, when he spoke with
your countryman Jedediah Cleishbotham, you would have sworn he had been
coeval with Claver'se and Burley, with the persecutors and persecuted,
and could number every shot the dragoons had fired at the fugitive
Covenanters. In fact, we discovered that no novel of the least celebrity
escaped his perusal, and that the gifted man of science was as much
addicted to the productions of your native country, (the land of Utopia
aforesaid,) in other words, as shameless and obstinate a peruser of
novels, as if he had been a very milliner's apprentice of eighteen. I
know little apology for troubling you with these things, excepting the
desire to commemorate a delightful evening, and a wish to encourage
you to shake off that modest diffidence which makes you afraid of being
supposed connected with the fairy-land of delusive fiction. I will
requite your tag of verse, from Horace himself, with a paraphrase
for your own use, my dear Captain, and for that of your country club,
excepting in reverence the clergyman and schoolmaster:--
_Ne sit ancillae tibi amor pudori, &c._
Take thou no scorn.
Of fiction born,
Fair fiction's muse to woe;
Old Homer's theme
Was but a dream,
Himself a fiction too.
Having told you your country, I must next, my dear Captain Clutterbuck,
make free to mention your own immediate descent. You are not to suppose
your land of prodigies so little known to us as the careful concealment
of your origin would seem to imply. But you have it in common with many
of your country, studiously and anxiously to hide any connexion with it.
There is this difference, indeed, betwixt your countrymen and those of
our more material world, that many of the most estimable of them, such
as an old Highland gentleman called Ossian, a monk of Bristol called
Rowley, and others, are inclined to pass themselves off as denizens of
the land of reality, whereas most of our fellow-citizens who deny their
country are such as that country would be very willing to disclaim. The
especial circumstances you mention relating to your life and services,
impose not upon us. We know the versatility of the unsubstantial species
to which you belong permits them to assume all manner of disguises; we
have seen them apparelled in the caftan of a Persian, and the silken
robe of a Chinese, [Footnote: See the Persian Letters, and the Citizen
of the World.] and are prepared to suspect their real character under
every disguise. But how can we be ignorant of your country and manners,
or deceived by the evasion of its inhabitants, when the voyages of
discovery which have been made to it rival in number those recorded by
Purchas or by Hackluyt? [Footnote: See Les Voyages Imaginaires.] And to
show the skill and perseverance of your navigators and travellers, we
have only to name Sindbad, Aboulfouaris, and Robinson Crusoe. These were
the men for discoveries. Could we have sent Captain Greenland to look
out for the north-west passage, or Peter Wilkins to examine Baffin's
Bay, what discoveries might we not have expected? But there are feats,
and these both numerous and extraordinary, performed by the inhabitants
of your country, which we read without once attempting to emulate.
I wander from my purpose, which was to assure you, that I know you as
well as the mother who _did_ not bear you, for MacDuff's peculiarity
sticks to your whole race. You are not born of woman, unless, indeed, in
that figurative sense, in which the celebrated Maria Edgeworth may, in
her state of single blessedness, be termed mother of the finest family
in England. You belong, sir, to the Editors of the land of Utopia, a
sort of persons for whom I have the highest esteem. How is it possible
it should be otherwise, when you reckon among your corporation the sage
Cid Hamet Benengeli, the short-faced president of the Spectator's Club,
poor Ben Silton, and many others, who have acted as gentlemen-ushers to
works which have cheered our heaviest, and added wings to our lightest
hours?
What I have remarked as peculiar to Editors of the class in which
I venture to enrol you, is the happy combination of fortuitous
circumstances which usually put you in possession of the works which
you have the goodness to bring into public notice. One walks on the
sea-shore, and a wave casts on land a small cylindrical trunk or casket,
containing a manuscript much damaged with sea-water, which is with
difficulty deciphered, and so forth. [Footnote: See the History of
Automathes.] Another steps into a chandler's shop, to purchase a pound
of butter, and, behold! the waste-paper on which it is laid is the
manuscript of a cabalist. [Footnote: Adventures of a Guinea.] A third
is so fortunate as to obtain from a woman who lets lodgings, the curious
contents of an antique bureau, the property of a deceased lodger.
[Footnote: Adventures of an Atom.] All these are certainly possible
occurrences; but, I know not how, they seldom occur to any Editors save
those of your country. At least I can answer for myself, that in my
solitary walks by the sea, I never saw it cast ashore any thing but
dulse and tangle, and now and then a deceased star-fish; my landlady
never presented me with any manuscript save her cursed bill; and the
most interesting of my discoveries in the way of waste-paper, was
finding a favourite passage of one of my own novels wrapt round an ounce
of snuff. No, Captain, the funds from which I have drawn my power
of amusing the public, have been bought otherwise than by fortuitous
adventure. I have buried myself in libraries to extract from the
nonsense of ancient days new nonsense of my own. I have turned over
volumes, which, from the pot-hooks I was obliged to decipher, might have
been the cabalistic manuscripts of Cornelius Agrippa, although I never
saw “the door open and the devil come in.” [Footnote: See Southey's
Ballad on the Young Man who read in a Conjuror's Books.] But all the
domestic inhabitants of the libraries were disturbed by the vehemence of
my studies:--
From my research the boldest spider fled,
And moths, retreating, trembled as I read;
From this learned sepulchre I emerged like the Magician in the Persian
Tales, from his twelve-month's residence in the mountain, not like him
to soar over the heads of the multitude, but to mingle in the crowd, and
to elbow amongst the throng, making my way from the highest society
to the lowest, undergoing the scorn, or, what is harder to brook,
the patronizing condescension of the one, and enduring the vulgar
familiarity of the other,--and all, you will say, for what?--to collect
materials for one of those manuscripts with which mere chance so often
accommodates your country-men; in other words, to write a successful
novel.--“O Athenians, how hard we labour to deserve your praise!”
I might stop here, my dear Clutterbuck; it would have a touching effect,
and the air of proper deference to our dear Public. But I will not
be false with you,--(though falsehood is--excuse the observation--the
current coin of your country,) the truth is, I have studied and lived
for the purpose of gratifying my own curiosity, and passing my own time;
and though the result has been, that, in one shape or other, I have
been frequently before the Public, perhaps more frequently than prudence
warranted, yet I cannot claim from them the favour due to those who have
dedicated their ease and leisure to the improvement and entertainment of
others.
Having communicated thus freely with you, my dear Captain, it follows,
of course, that I will gratefully accept of your communication, which,
as your Benedictine observed, divides itself both by subject, manner,
and age, into two parts. But I am sorry I cannot gratify your literary
ambition, by suffering your name to appear upon the title-page; and I
will candidly tell you the reason.
The Editors of your country are of such a soft and passive disposition,
that they have frequently done themselves great disgrace by giving up
the coadjutors who first brought them into public notice and public
favour, and suffering their names to be used by those quacks and
impostors who live upon the ideas of others. Thus I shame to tell how
the sage Cid Hamet Benengeli was induced by one Juan Avellaneda to play
the Turk with the ingenious Miguel Cervantes, and to publish a Second
Part of the adventures of his hero the renowned Don Quixote, without the
knowledge or co-operation of his principal aforesaid. It is true, the
Arabian sage returned to his allegiance, and thereafter composed a
genuine continuation of the Knight of La Mancha, in which the said
Avellaneda of Tordesillas is severely chastised. For in this you
pseudo-editors resemble the juggler's disciplined ape, to which a sly
old Scotsman likened James I., “if you have Jackoo in your hand, you can
make him bite me; if I have Jackoo in my hand, I can make him bite
you.” Yet, notwithstanding the _amende honorable_ thus made by Cid Hamet
Benengeli, his temporary defection did not the less occasion the decease
of the ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote, if he can be said to die, whose
memory is immortal. Cervantes put him to death, lest he should again
fall into bad hands. Awful, yet just consequence of Cid Hamet's
defection!
To quote a more modern and much less important instance. I am sorry to
observe my old acquaintance Jedediah Cleishbotham has misbehaved himself
so far as to desert his original patron, and set up for himself. I am
afraid the poor pedagogue will make little by his new allies, unless
the pleasure of entertaining the public, and, for aught I know, the
gentlemen of the long robe, with disputes about his identity.
[Footnote: I am since more correctly informed, that Mr. Cleishbotham
died some months since at Gandercleuch, and that the person assuming
his name is an impostor. The real Jedediah made a most Christian
and edifying end; and, as I am credibly informed, having sent for a
Cameronian clergyman when he was _in extremis_, was so fortunate as to
convince the good man, that, after all, he had no wish to bring down on
the scattered remnant of Mountain folks, “the bonnets of Bonny Dundee.”
Hard that the speculators in print and paper will not allow a good man
to rest quiet in his grave.
This note, and the passages in the text, were occasioned by a London
bookseller having printed, as a Speculation, an additional collection
of Tales of My Landlord, which was not so fortunate as to succeed in
passing on the world as genuine.]
Observe, therefore, Captain Clutterbuck, that, wise by these great
examples, I receive you as a partner, but a sleeping partner only. As
I give you no title to employ or use the firm of the copartnery we are
about to form, I will announce my property in my title-page, and put my
own mark on my own chattels, which the attorney tells me it will be a
crime to counterfeit, as much as it would to imitate the autograph of
any other empiric--a crime amounting, as advertisements upon little
vials assure to us, to nothing short of felony. If, therefore, my dear
friend, your name should hereafter appear in any title-page without
mine, readers will know what to think of you. I scorn to use either
arguments or threats; but you cannot but be sensible, that, as you owe
your literary existence to me on the one hand, so, on the other, your
very all is at my disposal. I can at pleasure cut off your annuity,
strike your name from the half-pay establishment, nay, actually put you
to death, without being answerable to any one. These are plain words to
a gentleman who has served during the whole war; but, I am aware, you
will take nothing amiss at my hands.
And now, my good sir, let us address ourselves to our task, and arrange,
as we best can, the manuscript of your Benedictine, so as to suit the
taste of this critical age. You will find I have made very liberal use
of his permission, to alter whatever seemed too favourable to the Church
of Rome, which I abominate, were it but for her fasts and penances.
Our reader is doubtless impatient, and we must own, with John Bunyan,
We have too long detain'd him in the porch,
And kept him from the sunshine with a torch.
Adieu, therefore, my dear Captain--remember me respectfully to the
parson, the schoolmaster, and the bailie, and all friends of the happy
club in the village of Kennaquhair. I have never seen, and never shall
see, one of their faces; and notwithstanding, I believe that as yet I am
better acquainted with them than any other man who lives.--I shall soon
introduce you to my jocund friend, Mr. John Ballantyne of Trinity Grove,
whom you will find warm from his match at single-stick with a brother
Publisher. [Footnote: In consequence of the pseudo Tales of My Landlord
printed in London, as already mentioned, the late Mr. John Ballantyne,
the author's publisher, had a controversy with the interloping
bibliopolist, each insisting that his Jedediah Cleishbotham was the real
Simon Pure.] Peace to their differences! It is a wrathful trade, and
the _irritabile genus_ comprehends the bookselling as well as the
book-writing species.--Once more adieu!