doctor, and his horse Nobs was a perfect horse, and as I humbly hope their history will be a perfect history, so ought the dedication thereunto to be perfect in its kind. Perfect therefore it shall be, as far as kalo-typography can make it. For though it would be hopeless to exceed all former dedica tions in the turn of a compliment or of a sentence, in the turn of the letters it is possible to exceed them all. It was once my fortune to employ a printer who had a love for his art; and having a taste that way myself, we discussed the merits of a new font one day when I happened to call in upon him. I objected to the angular inclination of a capital italic A, which stood upon its pins as if it were starting aghast from the next letter on the left, and was about to tumble upon that to the right; in which case down would go the rest of the word, like a row of soldiers which children make with cards. My printer was too deeply enamoured with the beauties of his font to have either ear or eye for its defects; and hastily waiving that point he called my attention to a capital R in the same line, which cocked up its tail just as if it had been nicked; that cock of the tail had fascinated him. "Look, sir," said he, while his eyes glistened with all the ardour of an amateur; "look at that turn!—that's sweet, sir!" and drawing off the hand with the fore finger of which he had indicated it, he described in the air the turn that had delighted him, in a sort of heroic flourish, his head with a diminished axis, like the inner stile of a pentagraph, following the movement. I have never seen that R since without remembering him. ** *** ** ****** *** ******** ** *** ***** ******* ** ******* *** ********* ***** *** ***** *** ******* ***** ** ****** , *** *** ******* He who can read the stars, may read in them the secret which he seeketh. But the turns of my dedication to the Bhow Begum shall not be trusted to the letter founders, a set of men remarkable for involving their craft in such mystery that no one ever taught it to another, every one who has practised it having been obliged either surreptitiously to obtain the secret, or to invent a method for himself. It shall be in the old English letter, not only because that alphabet hath in its curves and angles, its frettings and redundant lines, a sort of picturesque similitude with Gothic architecture, but also because in its breadth and beauty it will display the colour of the ink to most advantage. For the dedication shall not be printed in black after the ordinary fashion, nor in white like the sermon upon the excise laws, nor in red after the mode of Mr. Dibdin's half titles, but in the colour of that imperial encaustic ink, which by the laws of the Roman empire it was death for any but the Roman emperor himself to use. Britons live in a free country, wherein every man may use what coloured ink seemeth good to him, and put as much We gall in it as he pleases, or any other ingredient whatsoever.* Moreover, this is an imperial age, in which, to say nothing of M. Ingelby, the Emperor of the Conjurers, we have seen no fewer than four new emperors. Him of Russia, who did not think the old title of Peter the Great good enough for him; him of France, for whom any name but that of tyrant or murderer is too good; him of Austria, who took up one imperial appellation to cover over the humiliating manner in which he laid another down; and him of Hayti, who if he be wise will order all public business to be carried on in the talkee-talkee tongue, and make it high treason for any person to speak or write French in his dominions. We also must dub our old parliament imperial forsooth! that we may not be behindhand with the age. Then we have imperial dining tables! imperial oil for nourishing the hair! imperial liquid for boot tops! Yea, and by all the Cæsars deified and damnified, imperial blacking! For my part I love to go with the stream, so I will have an imperial dedication. Behold it, reader. Therein is mystery. * In the English copy this dedication is printed, not with black ink, but with some pigment of a hue unknown in the printing office of the American publishers, and not to be imitated without some expense and more trouble and loss of time. They have, therefore, adventured to substitute for it plain honest sable, at the hazard even of spoiling the author's mysterious mystery. CHAPTER I. A. I. NO BOOK CAN BE COMPLETE WITHOUT A PREFACE. I see no cause but men may pick their teeth" WHO was the inventor of prefaces? I shall be obliged to the immortal Mr. Urban, (immortal, because like the king in law he never dies,) if he will propound this question for me in his magazine, that great lumber-room wherein small ware of all kinds has been laid up higgledy-piggledy by halfpennyworths or farthing-worths at a time for fourscore years, till, like broken glass, rags, or rubbish, it has acquired value by mere accumulation. To send a book like this into the world without a preface, would be as impossible as it is to appear at court without a bag at the head and a sword at the tail; for as the perfection of dress must be shown at court, so in this history should the perfection of histories be exhibited. The book must be omni genere absolutum: it must prove and exemplify the perfectibility of books: yea, with all imaginable respect for the "Delicate Investigation," which I leave in undisputed possession of an appellation so exquisitely appropriate, I conceive that the title of THE BOOK, as a popular designation Kar' εoxn, should be transferred from the edifying report of that inquiry to the present unique, unrivalled, and unrivalable production; a production, the like whereof hath not been, is not, and will not be. Here, however, let me warn my Greek and Arabian translators how they render the word, that if they offend the mufti or the patriarch, the offence as well as the danger may be theirs: I wash my hands of both. I write in plain English, innocently, and in the simplicity of my heart: what may be made of it in heathen languages concerns not me. |