C------ was immediately afterwards married to Emma, and my informant
assured me he saw them many years afterwards, living happily together in
the county of Kent, on the fortune bequeathed by the “Thane of Fife.”
J. T.
Castle Douglas, July,
1832.
Indite, my muse indite,
Subpoena’d is thy lyre,
The praises to requite
Which rules of court require.
Probationary
odes.
The concluding a literary undertaking, in whole or
in part, is, to the inexperienced at least, attended
with an irritating titillation, like that which attends
on the healing of a wound—a prurient impatience,
in short, to know what the world in general, and friends
in particular, will say to our labours. Some
authors, I am told, profess an oyster-like indifference
upon this subject; for my own part, I hardly believe
in their sincerity. Others may acquire it from
habit; but, in my poor opinion, a neophyte like myself
must be for a long time incapable of such sang
froid.
Frankly, I was ashamed to feel how childishly I felt
on the occasion. No person could have said prettier
things than myself upon the importance of stoicism
concerning the opinion of others, when their applause
or censure refers to literary character only; and
I had determined to lay my work before the public,
with the same unconcern with which the ostrich lays
her eggs in the sand, giving herself no farther trouble
concerning the incubation, but leaving to the atmosphere
to bring forth the young, or otherwise, as the climate
shall serve. But though an ostrich in theory,
I became in practice a poor hen, who has no sooner
made her deposit, but she runs cackling about, to call
the attention of every one to the wonderful work which
she has performed.
As soon as I became possessed of my first volume,
neatly stitched up and boarded, my sense of the necessity
of communicating with some one became ungovernable.
Janet was inexorable, and seemed already to have tired
of my literary confidence; for whenever I drew near
the subject, after evading it as long as she could,
she made, under some pretext or other, a bodily retreat
to the kitchen or the cockloft, her own peculiar and
inviolate domains. My publisher would have been
a natural resource; but he understands his business
too well, and follows it too closely, to desire to
enter into literary discussions, wisely considering,
that he who has to sell books has seldom leisure to
read them. Then my acquaintance, now that I have
lost Mrs. Bethune Baliol, are of that distant and
accidental kind, to whom I had not face enough to communicate
the nature of my uneasiness, and who probably would
only have laughed at me had I made any attempt to
interest them in my labours.
