,
deep calling unto deep? who can stand upon the hill-tops, height
beckoning unto height? who can track its labyrinths? who can map its
caverns? A limitless essence, an unfailing spring, an evergreen
fruit-tree, a riddle unsolved, a quaint museum, a hot-bed of inventions,
an over-mantling tankard, a whimsical motley, a bursting volcano, a
full, independent, generous--a poor, fettered, jealous, Anomaly,
such--bear witness--is an author's mind. O, theme of many topics! chaos
of ill-sorted fancies! Let us come now to the jealousies, the real or
imaginary wrongs of authorship: hereafter treat we this at lengthier;
"for the time present"--I quote the facetious Lord Coke, when writing on
that highly exhilerating topic, the common-law--"hereof let this little
taste suffice." Is it not a wrong to be taken for a mere book-merchant,
a mercenary purveyor of learning and invention, of religion and
philosophy, of instruction, or even of amusements, for the sole
consideration of value received, as one would use a stalking-horse for
getting near a stag? this, too, when ten to one some cormorant on the
tree of knowledge, some staid-looking publisher in decent mourning, is
complacently pocketing the profits, and modestly charging you with loss?
and this, moreover and more poignantly, when the flame of responsibility
on some high subject is blazing at your heart, and the young Elihu, even
if he would, cannot keep silence? Is it not a wrong to find pearls
unprized, because many a modern, like his Celtic progenitors, (for I
must not say like swine,) would sooner crush an acorn? to know your
estimation among men ebbs and flows according to the accident of
success, rather than the quality of merit? to be despised as an animal
who must necessarily be living on his wits in some purlieu, answering to
that antiquated reproach, a Grub-street attic; or suspected among
gentler company in this most mercantile age for a pickpocket, a pauper,
a _chevalier d'industrie_? And then those hounds upon the bleeding
flanks of many a hunted author, those open-mouthed inexorable critics,
(I allude to the Pariah class, not to the higher caste brethren,) how
suddenly they rend one, and fear not! Only for others do I speak, and in
no degree on account of having felt their fangs, as many have done, my
betters; gentle and kind, as domesticated spaniels, have reviewers in
general been to your humble confessor, and for such courtesies is he
their debtor. But who can be