The miseries and disappointments of the literary life are proverbial:
"Toil, envy, want, the patron and the gaol."
To these "calamities of authors," I wish to add a new, and as yet
unrecorded trial, incidental to this age of cheap postage and
extravagant puffs. I am myself _a small author_, and have written on
theology and antiquarianism; and my publisher's shelves know the weight
of my labours. Conceive then my delight, a few weeks ago, at receiving a
"confidential" letter from B. D., requesting the immediate transmission
of my theological tomes to a country address; on the representation
that, although B. D. well knew that my writings had been favourably
received, he judged that "striking recommendations at this moment in
influential journals to which he had reviewing access during the
parliamentary recess, would prove of essential service." I wrote to my
publisher, who coolly answered that it was "no go;" and I even stood the
tempting shock of a second application from B. D., remonstratively
hinting that, but for the non-arrival of the volumes, a notice would
have appeared that very week in an "important quarter." The hopeful mind
has difficulty in settling down into a belief that men deceive.
Not a month had elapsed before I received another letter, sealed with
such a signet as in size would rival the jewel sometimes seen pendent
from the waistcoat pocket of a Jew broker on Saturday, and engraven with
evidence of illustrious lineage, if quarterings be only half true. I did
not break this magnificent seal, but I tore open the envelope, and I
found that my antiquarian researches had been most flatteringly
estimated by a gentleman with a double surname, which happened to be
familiar to me. The communication was, of course, "private;" and it
expressed the writer's knowledge, from hearsay, of the "value, merit,
and ability" of my book, and the satisfaction it would afford my
correspondent, to give it a "handsome an elaborate review in both the
widely circulating and reviewing publications with which he had the
honour of being connected." A copy of my work was to be sent to his own
address, or to that of his bookseller: or, even a third course was
obligingly opened to me--"he would send his man-servant to my publisher
for the volume!" I sent the book, and the same day communicated with the
head of the family who legally bore this very handsome name used by my
correspondent, and he told me that he had just received 5_l._ worth of
books from a great house in "the Row," which were obviously designed to
be the response to an application from the gentleman with a large seal,
who was "an impostor." This may be so; but I have received an
acknowledgement for the receipt of my little work, so kind and courtly
in its tone, that I do not even yet quite despair of one day reading the
promised "handsome and elaborate review."