ANTE-PREFACE.

I here present thee with a hive of bees, laden some with wax, and some with honey. Fear not to approach! There are no wasps, there are no hornets here. If some wanton bee should chance to buzz about thine ears, stand thy ground and hold thy hands; there's none will sting thee if thou strike not first. If any do, she hath honey in her bag will cure thee too. QUARLES.

86

PREFACES, said Charles Blount, Gent., who committed suicide because the law would not allow him to marry his brother's widow-a law, be it remarked in passing, which is not sanctioned by reason, and which, instead of being in conformity with Scripture, is in direct opposition to it, being in fact the mere device of a corrupt and greedy church"prefaces," said this flippant, ill-opinioned, and unhappy man, ever were, and still are but of two sorts, let other modes and fashions vary as they please. Let the profane long peruke succeed the godly cropped hair; the cravat, the ruff; presbytery, popery; and popery presbytery again, yet still the author keeps to his old and wonted method of prefacing; when at the beginning of his book he enters, either with a halter about his neck, submitting himself to his reader's mercy whether he shall be hanged, or no; or else in a huffing manner he appears with the halter in his hand, and threatens to hang his reader, if he gives him not his good word. This, · with the excitement of some friends to his undertaking, and some few apologies for want of time, books, and the like, are the constant and usual shams of all scribblers as well ancient as modern." This was not true then, nor is it now; but when he proceeds to say, “For my part I enter the lists upon another score," so say I with him; and my preface shall say the rest.

VÓL. I.-4

1

Oh for a quill plucked from a seraph's wing !-YOUNG.

So the poet exclaimed; and his exclamation may be quoted as one example more of the vanity of human wishes; for in order to get a seraph's quill it would be necessary, according to Mrs. Glasse's excellent item in her directions for roasting a hare, to begin by catching a seraph. A quill from a seraph's wing is, I confess, above my ambition; but one from a peacock's tail was within my reach; and be it known unto all people, nations, and languages, that with a peacock's quill this preface hath been penned-literallytruly, and bona-fidely speaking. And this is to write, as the learned old Pasquier says, pavonesquement, which in Latin minted for the nonce may be rendered pavonicè, and in English peacockically, or peacockishly, whichever the reader may like best. That such a pen has verily and indeed been used upon this occasion I affirm. I affirm it upon the word of a true man; and here is a captain of his majesty's navy at my elbow, who himself made the pen, and who, if evidence were required to the fact, would attest it by as round an oath as ever rolled over a right English tongue. Nor will the time easily escape his remembrance, the bells being at this moment ringing, June 4, 1814, to celebrate the king's birthday, and the public notification that peace has been concluded with France.

I nave oftentimes had the happiness of seeing due commendation bestowed by gentle critics, unknown admirers, and partial friends upon my pen, which has been married to all amiable epithets: classical, fine, powerful, tender, touching, pathetic, strong, fanciful, daring, elegant, sublime, beautiful. I have read these epithets with that proper satisfaction which when thus applied they could not fail to impart, and sometimes qualified the pride which they inspired by looking at the faithful old tool of the muses beside me, worn to the stump in their service: the one end mended up to the quick in that spirit of economy which becomes a son of the Lackland family, and shortened at the other by the gradual and alternate processes of burning and biting, till a scant inch only is left above the finger place. Philemon Holland was but a type of me in this respect. Indeed I may be allowed

to say that I have improved upon his practice, or at least that I get more out of a pen than he did, for in the engraved title page to his Cyropædia, where there appears the portrait of the interpres marked by a great D enclosing the Greek letter (which I presume designates Doctor Philemon) ætatis suæ 80. A°. 1632, it may be plainly seen that he used his pen only at one end. Peradventure he delighted not, as I do, in the mitigated ammoniac odour.

But thou, oh gentle reader, who in the exercise of thy sound judgment and natural benignity wilt praise this preface, thou mayst with perfect propriety bestow the richest epithets upon the pen wherewith its immortal words were first clothed in material forms. Beautiful, elegant, fine, splendid, fanciful, will be to the very letter of truth: versatile it is as the wildest wit; flexible as the most monkeylike talent; and shouldst thou call it tender, I will whisper in thine ear-that it is only too soft. Yet softness may be suitable; for of my numerous readers one half will probably be soft by sex, and of the other half a very considerable proportion soft by nature. Soft, therefore, be the pen and soft the strain.

I have drawn up the window blinds (though sunshine at this time acts like snuff upon the mucous membrane of my nose) in order that the light may fall upon this excellent poet's wand as I wave it to and fro, making cuts five and six of the broadsword exercise. Every feather of its fringe is now lit up by the sun; the hues of green, and gold, and amethyst are all brought forth; and that predominant lustre which can only be likened to some rich metallic oxyde; and that spot of deepest purple, the pupil of an eye for whose glorious hue neither metals, nor flowers, nor precious stones afford a resemblance: its likeness is only to be found in animated life, in birds and insects whom nature seems to have formed when she was most prodigal of beauty: I have seen it indeed upon the sea, but it has been in some quiet bay, when the reflection of the land combined with the sky and the ocean to produce it.

And what can be more emblematical of the work which I am beginning than the splendid instrument wherewith the preface is traced? What could more happily typify the combination of parts, each perfect in itself when separately considered, yet all connected into one harmonious whole; the story running through like the stem or backbone, which the episodes and digressions fringe like so many featherlets, leading up to that catastrophe, the gem or eye-star, for which the whole was formed, and in which all terminate.

They who are versed in the doctrine of sympathies and the arcana of correspondences, as revealed to the Swedish Emanuel, will doubtless admire the instinct or inspiration which directed my choice to the Pavonian pen. The example should be followed by all consumers of ink and quill.