Printed by A. Strahan,Printers-Street.
Printed by A. Strahan,Printers-Street.
PREFACE.
COURTEOUS READER,
Theproduction that I now submit to you, proposes to represent the manners of the times, in various situations, but especially in literary departments. These are subjects with which I have been, and am, peculiarly conversant; and I trust the exhibition will be found fair and impartial, and also general, without any satirical allusion to individual characters.
Many are prepossessed with a notion, that a writer, who, in a fictitious story, describes the times, means particular persons, and not classes of persons. The only work of the kind that I ever produced, was exposed to this prejudice. In my Highlander, there was scarcely acharacter of any note, that was not applied to half a dozen of individuals, whom I never intended particularly to exhibit, and of most of whom I had never heard. I confess, however, it is difficult to pourtray any character, either good or bad, without taking some of the lines from some good or bad person, whom you have actually known. But it was my purpose so to assort and mingle features, as to prevent any approach to individuality. Of the applications, the greater number were made by the acquaintances andfriendsof the supposed objects; some, however, by the parties themselves. I have had several claimants to characters, that are none of the best; and when the claims were advanced, I really did not know how or why the imputation arose. Should a person happen to be a forward, busy, vain-glorious coxcomb, as thousands are, and I have noknowledge of him, or his qualifications, I must be surprized, if in having drawn such a general and common character, I should be charged with intending to expose that individual person. I may, afterwards, be able to account for the supposition: but the food of vanity is notoriety; and a frivolous egotist, by representing himself as of sufficient consequence to be satirized, will very readily fancy he rises in importance, and will pretend, in every party, to complain of the attack, while his whole purpose is to make himself thesubject of talk. “Vanity, and vanity of vanities all is vanity.”
More than half a dozen were mentioned as the models of Doctor Vampus, the ignorant, boasting,hawking and peddlingmaster of an academy. To no one person, I am convinced, the whole of that character could apply; but I am equally convinced, many parts of itmight hit a dozen of dozens of that class of the profession. A village male gossip also received an individual application, and perhaps some parts might suit the gossip of that district; but I declare it was applied to gossips in adjacent districts; and some have done me the honour to say, it suits such a nuisance in most villages of England. There were several demireps, one of whom, so far from having any modern individual in view, I copied from Lady Bellaston, only giving her modern manners, and substituting for decayed charms, youth and beauty. Lady Mary Manhunt, I find has been applied to twenty originals, when I really had none in view, but the veteran rival of Sophia Western. Other demireps, of lower account, had also a good many applications; and to persons that I at the time had never heard to be demireps. In one individual case, referring to the hero’sfair fellow-traveller in a stage-coach, a totally erroneous and false application, I have been told, was made. In certain characters, there might be grounds, though I did not know them at the time; in that character, I am thoroughly convinced there never were any grounds.
There was a great disposition to apply exhibitions to scenes, with which I was once conversant; and also to other very distant scenes, with which I was conversant at the time of the publication. My hero having first appeared in the Highlands of Scotland, I could not avoid describing Highland manners; and I exhibited the majority as I found them, amiable and respectable, and a few as I found them able and estimable. There, however, as well as in other parts of the world, there are fools and knaves; and among the weak, there is particularly the preposterous folly ofsupposing, birth and rank a substitute for the want of talents and virtues. That nonsensical absurdity, perhaps, I might expose, though I cannot see why the application should have been made to any individual, unless, indeed, it accidentally happened, that the cap exactly fitted; if it did, it was not my fault;I madetheCAP, but I did not make thehead. With regard to the other district in question, some of its inhabitants were of much more importance to themselves, than either to me or the world, in supposing that I would consider them individually, as suitable objects of satire. I described a certain class in society, in the vicinity of London; and I have not the least doubt, that if the description applied to any, it applies to every one populous village within ten miles of the metropolis, as well as to another. Wherever there is gadding, card-playing, gossiping, half-breeding, mixed with the peculiarities ofthe tradesmen, and retired shopkeepers of London and Middlesex; in short, persons without the education and sentiments of gentlemen and ladies, thrust into circumstances in which, with the allowable partiality of self-estimation, they fancy themselves to belong to that rank, and ape the fashionable amusements of their betters: where, perhaps, the widow of a rich grocer, or the dashing daughter of mine host, now agemmanand an Esquire, by noise and glare, and affectation, hope to make you forget the signs of the three sugar-loaves, or thehog in armour: to such impotent attempts of inveterate and incurable vulgarity, to pass for gentility, the description in question either applies generally, as was intended, or does not apply at all. One thing, I observed, that the wise and good characters in that production, have not been applied byfriends.
In the work that I now offer to the public, from former experience ofmisinterpretation, I have been more scrupulously cautious to guard against any possibility of individual application. In the former novel, I merely took care not to copy a fool, a coxcomb, a debauchee, or a knave, or any other character of a ridiculous or bad kind, from any persons known to me for these qualifications. Still, however, frominadvertence, I did take a feature or two here and there, that I grieve to acknowledge, on perusing the picture after it was finished, struck me with a likeness in some lineament. In the present novel, I have been much more vigilantly cautious. I not only have not copied fools, &c. from persons known to me to be such, but in drawing any character of that or the otherequivalentclasses, I have carefully run my memory over the individuals that I knowto belong to these, and have studiously avoidedtreading on their sore heel. The end of this work being to give a view of modern literature, I, conformably to fact, represent several men of extraordinary talents and erudition; many more of respectable, but not extraordinary talents and erudition, and a considerable number of literary and other book-makers, without either talents or erudition. In this last class of representation, have I exerted my principal care to shun individual reference; and when drawing a picture of a literary dunce, the following has been my method, and I hope it has succeeded.
I ran over my delineation, and then made my memory run over this literary dunce, and that literary dunce of my own acquaintance; and I asked myself this question:—Does not this part of the description rather hit Jacky Allory; now Jacky is a worthy acquaintance of mine,a dunce, that without a single spark of genius, and with some scraps of knowledge, having acquired the gift of spelling, is an undertaker-general in literature? Will not this picture of a literary manufacturer rather hit Jacky? On reflecting, I find not particularly; the circumstances and adjuncts are totally different; there is no resemblance between the picture and that individual, but a resemblance that holds between the picture, and every other original that manufactures books without learning or genius. Jacky stands not alone,he is in a croud; the most inventive malignity, therefore, can here make no individual application. I have exhibited a specimen of tours, in which the tourist conveys no information but what was known before, or what was totally immaterial, whether it was known or not. Of that kind, numberless specimens have beenwritten, especially in large quartos. I have endeavoured to copy the general character of such insignificance and inanity; but to prevent individual application, have made the scene and limits totally new. The outset of the tour is the Black Bear Inn, Piccadilly, the course through Knightsbridge, on to Old Brentford, thence round home by Kingston and Richmond; and in that circuit, I flatter myself, that in two pages, I have condensed the essence of many of our most voluminous tourists of the dunce kind. I have introduced plays written by dunces; but in such a manner, as to apply generally to many dramatic joiners, individually to none; having carefully made the history and circumstances probable in themselves, but totally unlike any that have actually existed. I have touched upon German literature, and the system of taste, morals,and religion, which these importations have produced in England. I have mentioned novels of that kind, and also of other kinds, especially those that are written by female scribes, not forgetting the effusions of milliners, when their own work is slack; and, as in duty bound, I have offered a just tribute of praise to the munificent encouragers of these inestimable fictions. I have presented a dunce as author of a history much more voluminous than Gibbon’s; but to preclude any possible misinterpretation, I have made the subject Jack the Giant Killer, of whom it is well known no voluminous history has been written either by a dunce, or any other author. Dunce writers I represent as faithless and backbiting, towards other professional votaries of literature. At the same time, to prevent misapprehension, I carefully declare I do not impute these efforts of malignity, toany thing in dunces more rancorous than in other men. It arises merely from taking to an occupation, in which stupidity is not equal to genius; and from that principle of human nature, that makes us repine at the success of others, in a pursuit wherein we have failed, though the failure be owing to no bad fortune, or no unfair means, but simply to unfitness for the pursuit. If a poor deformed urchin of no fortune, sense, or accomplishments, were to address a beautiful young lady, and to have for his rival a very handsome, graceful man of character, talents, and property, the urchin, most unquestionably, would fail, from the folly of his suit, but, agreeably to human nature, he would revile, and try to disparage the accomplished cavalier, who succeeded because he was formed for success. Such is a literary dunce, in respect to a literary genius.
Having these general objects in view, from the precautions I have used, I am thoroughly confident, that no application will be made to any individual dunce, by hisfriendswho may peruse “Modern Literature:” for that he himself should make the application, I should have no apprehension, were the likeness ever so obvious.
One kind of system, of which the most numerous portion of the votaries cannot be called literary; but that has an extensive influence on certain departments of the literature of the times, I have not failed to consider: that is methodism, especially itinerant. There have been very able men, and I believe also worthy men, among methodists; and I doubt not, but there are some able, and many good men, partially tinged with that theory. Having the utmost respect for such disciples of any Christian sect,I, nevertheless, can plainly see, not only the tendency, but result of certain theological doctrines, which not all, but many of the methodists profess to admit. Visionaries of that class (or if not visionaries, what is much worse, hypocrites), profess to follow different guides from reason, conscience, and genuine Christianity; interpreted by reason, and the tenour of the scriptures, and applied by conscience. To the implicit votaries of faith, without works, I object, because to the implicit votaries of faith, without works, reason, and conscience, obviously, and the scriptures expressly object; and because experience demonstrates, that this chimera is not only mad, but mischievous. I farther censure a practice, frequent among that sect, of grossly ignorant men, circulating through the country, and pretending to instruct mankind. This is the more dangerous, becausenot merely an adventure of an individual vagabond, foolish or frantic, but connected with a principle diffused through many of the sect, that there still exists among these brethren a divine inspiration, which every sound Theologian knows to have ceased in the early ages of the Christian dispensation. Ignorant venders of nonsense or mischief I have not spared: I have represented an itinerant clown, a preacher of methodism, in those circumstances which reason may easily connect withsuchdoctrines and talents; and which experience has woefully shewn to be closely connected with such doctrines and talents. I have not written a line, to which any wise and learned methodist, (and such only are fit for preaching) can affix any blame, as adverse to his views and exhortations; or which any moral and pious methodist can censure, as hostile to his practice.
Though literature be the chief object of the present production, it is far from being the sole; other characters and manners are introduced, and, I trust, not one will be found to bear individual application, except a few sketches of great and admirable characters, that incidentally appear.
The present work is only part of my plan, which will be completed in another novel, now considerably advanced, and to be entitled “The Author.”
Sloane-Terrace, May 8th, 1804.