'CHRYSAL, OR THE ADVENTURES OF A GUINEA.'
We gather from the copy of this work, which was formerly on the shelves of Thackeray's library, that 'Chrysal' had reached seven editions in 1771, having been originally published in 1760, with a highly laudatory dedication to William Pitt.
The bookseller's prefix to the first edition is slightly imaginative. To describe its nature briefly, the publisher, while taking a country stroll in Whitechapel, then an Arcadian village, was overtaken by a shower, and sought shelter in a cottage where a humble family were breakfasting. His eye was caught by a sheet of manuscript which had done duty for a butter-plate. Its contents interested him, and he learnt that the chandler next door wrapped up her commodities in such materials. He made an experimental purchase, which was done up in another leaf of the paper. Cautious enquiries elicited that brown paper being costly, and a quantity of old 'stuff' having been left by a long deceased lodger of her departed mother's, the manuscript was thus turned into use. The enterprising publisher invested 1s. 6d. for brown paper, and secured the entire remaining sheets in exchange. Finding, on perusal, that he had secured matter of some literary value, he pursued his investigations with the same lady, and learned that the author was an unfortunate schemer, who, after wasting his entire fortune in seeking the philosopher's stone, perceived his folly too late, wrote the story of 'Chrysal' in ridicule of the fallacy of golden visions, and expired before he could realise any profit by the publication of his papers. The bookseller secretly resolved to admit the good woman to a half share of the profits of her 'heirship,' and 'Chrysal' appeared. It excited some attention, and had various charges laid to its account.
The scheme is ingenious, tracing the guinea from its projection, and giving an account of the successive stages of its changing existence. We are admitted to contemplate the influence of gold in various situations; with dissertations on 'traffic,' and, in short, follow the history of a guinea through the possession of numerous owners, male and female, while the reader is by these means introduced to some very curious situations.
The little design in the margin occurs in the history of a horned cock, a parody on collectors of curiosities, describing the manner in which a noble 'virtuoso' was imposed upon by a cunning vendor of wonderful productions. There was considerable competition to secure the composite phenomenon, and when his lordship obtained it, a convocation of 'savants' was summoned to report on the marvel. The bird, a game-cock, had unfortunately taken offence at an owl in a neighbouring cage, and when the company arrived it had rubbed off one of the horns and disturbed the other. While arguing that the bird had shed its horn in the course of nature, one of the company dropped some snuff near the bird's eye, who thereupon shook his head with sufficient violence to dislodge the remaining horn; exposing the imposture, and overwhelming the virtuoso with such vexation that the cock was sacrificed to Æsculapius forthwith.
The guinea gets into the hands of a justice of the peace, in the shape of a bribe, and a very remarkable state of corruption and traffic in iniquity is displayed. The little pencilling of a quaint figure holding the scales occurs on the margin of a paragraph which records a warm dispute between the justice and his clerk on the proportioning of their plunder, the clerk revolting against an arrangement by which it is proposed to confine him to a bare third! The dispute is checked by the arrival of some customers, matrons dwelling within the justice's district, who come to compound with him in regular form 'for the breach of those laws he is appointed to support.'
The sketches pencilled in 'Chrysal' do not follow the story very closely; indeed, they can hardly be intimately associated with the text they accompany. This, however, is quite an exceptional case; the drawings found in Mr. Thackeray's books being, in nearly every instance, very felicitous embodiments of the subject-matter of the works they illustrate.
On a fly-leaf of 'Chrysal' is a jovial sketch of light-hearted and nimble-toed tars, forming a realistic picture of the good cheer a guinea may command, and immediately suggestive of bags of prize-money, apoplectically stored with the yellow boys which, in the good old days, were supposed to profusely line the pockets of true salts when they indulged in the delights of a spell on shore: this was the time when sailors experimented in frying, as the story represents them, superfluous watches in bacon-fat, as a scientific relaxation, when the ships were paid off at Portsmouth, and 'jolly tars' had invested in more timekeepers than the exigencies of punctuality strictly demanded.
