Your correspondent T. K. seems to think that Scotchmen, and Scotch
subjects, have an undue prominence in "N. & Q.:" let me therefore introduce
to your readers a neglected _Irishman_, in the person of Peter Brett, the
"parish clerk and schoolmaster of Castle-Knock." This worthy seems to have
been a great author, and the literary oracle of the district over which he
presided, and exercised the above-named important functions. His _magnum
opus_ appears to have been his _Miscellany_; a farrago of prose and verse,
which, to distinguish it from the herd of books bearing that title, is
yclept, _par excellence_, Brett's _Miscellany_. When Mr. Brett commenced to
enlighten the world, and when his candle was snuffed out, I know not. My
volume of the above work purports to be the fifth:
"Containing above a hundred useful and entertaining Particulars,
Divine, Moral, and Historical; chiefly designed for the Improvement of
Youth, and those who have not the Opportunity of reading large Volumes.
Interspersed with several Entertaining Things never before printed.
Dublin, 1762."
The parish clerk's _bill of fares_ is of the most seductive kind. Under all
the above heads he has something spicy to say, either in prose or verse;
but the marrow of the book lies in the Preface. To say that a man, holding
the important offices of parish clerk and schoolmaster, could be charged
with conceit, would be somewhat rash; if, therefore, in remarking upon the
rare instance of a parish clerk becoming an author, he lets out that
"whatever cavillers may say about his performance, they must admit his
extensive reading, and the great labour and application the concoction of
these books has cost him," he is but indulging in a feeling natural to a
man of genius, and a pardonable ebullition of the _amour propre_. Mr. Brett
seems to have been twitted with the charge of taking up authorship as a
commercial spec; he sullenly admits that his book-making leaves him
something, but nothing like a recompense, and draws an invidious comparison
between one Counsellor Harris and himself; the {534} former having received
200l. per annum for collecting materials for the _Life of King William
III._, while he, the schoolmaster of Castle-Knock, scarcely gets salt to
his porridge for his _Collections and Observations for perpetuating the
Honour and Glory of the King of Kings_.