nings the plane-trees' leaves glint golden
in the sun. One may still hear the chimes at midnight as Falstaff and
Justice Shallow heard them of old. Here, where only a muffled murmur
comes from the work-a-day world, a man in the last century might have
dreamed away his life, lonely as Peter Wilkins on the island. One can
imagine the amiable recluse composing his homely romance amid such
surroundings. Perhaps it was the one labour of his life. He may have
come to the Inn originally with the aspiration of making fame and money;
and then the spirit of cloistered calm turned him from such vulgar
paths, and instead of losing his fine feelings and swelling the ranks of
the plutocrats, he gave us a charming romance for our fireside. With
the literary men of his day he seems to have had no intercourse. Not a
single mention of him is to be found among his contemporaries, and
we may be sure that he cut no brilliant figure at the club-houses. No
chorus of reviewers chimed the praises of "Peter Wilkins." So far as
I can discover, the "Monthly Review" was the only journal in which the
book was noticed, and such criticism as the following can hardly be
termed laudatory:--"Here is a very strange performance indeed. It seems
to be the illegitimate offspring of no very natural conjunction, like
'Gulliver's Travels' and 'Robinson Crusoe;' but much inferior to the
manner of these two performances as to entertainment or utility. It has
all that is impossible in the one or impossible in the other, without
the wit and spirit of the first, or the just strokes of nature and
useful lessons of morality in the second. However, if the invention of
wings for mankind to fly with is sufficient amends for all the dulness
and unmeaning extravagance of the author, we are willing to allow that
his book has some merit, and that he deserves some encouragement at
least as an able mechanic, if not as a good author." But the book
was not forgotten. A new edition appeared in 1783, and again in the
following year. It was included in Weber's "Popular Romances," 1812, and
published separately, with some charming plates by Stothard, in 1816.
Within the last fifty years it has been frequently issued, entire or
mutilated, in a popular form. A drama founded on the romance was acted
at Covent Garden on April 16, 1827; and more than once of late years
"Peter Wilkins" has afforded material for pantomimes. In 1763 a French
translation (by Philippe Florent de Puisieux) appea