NUMBER THREE.
J. Rheyn Piksohn.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER MAGAZINE.
Saratoga Springs, July 4, 1843.
Sir: Being now located at the Springs, amid all the gayety and elegance and aristocracy of the land, I found last evening, among the ladies in the drawing-room, the July number of your periodical. Again was I shocked and overwhelmed at the gross impudence with which you persist in the promulgation of my private affairs. That you should have published my second personal epistle to yourself, is a tremendous aggravation of your audacity. I shall take care to frame this in a style which will preclude all possibility of your printing it, and disclosing your own rascality.
I have heard moreover that well-known individuals in England have been highly disgusted at the cool, hyena-like, editorial ferocity with which you and your greedy subscribers feed upon this foul dish of scandal. Such heartless conduct cannot fail to confirm our neighbors across the 'great Atlantic privilege' in their uncomplimentary opinion of American probity. Repudiation was a virtue compared with this infamous violation of the rights of man. Even here, amid all the soothing magnificence of the surroundings; in the solemn stillness of the woods, or by the stainless bosom of Saratoga Lake, or by that salubrious fount of which half a dozen tumblers are so invigorating to the spirits and beneficial to the bowels, I am sick at soul when I realize the wickedness and worldly-mindedness of Magazine Editors.
You have not hinted one syllable about pecuniary compensation; and how, under such a load of ingratitude, can you expect that you will be long permitted to pursue your fiendish career? A reasonable sum would satisfy me; but I forbear to urge it, for I doubt if you are a Christian. This is the last time I shall address you; nor should I now write, except to charge you immediately to return the remaining manuscripts, or to forward the customary fee for articles of equal value. You will not dare to publish this letter, I am sure, unless you are a fool as well as a fraudulent and evil-minded person.
Yours, by no means, —— ——.'
At the risk of our reputation, we have ventured to publish the above severe remonstrance; and in reply, we take pleasure in soothing the lacerated nerves of our financial friend by the following statement:
Some days ago, about sherry-cobbler time, a middle-aged individual, between five and six feet high, not very stout, although far from slim; of an open countenance; a nose Greco-Gothic, inclining to the Roman, and eyes neither light nor dark, called at our sanctum, and claimed to be the author of the poetical epistles in question. Before we had time to apologize for our part in this curious affair, the stranger, so far from producing a horse-whip, assured us, with a benignant smile, that he forgave the liberty we had assumed, and moreover, that he wished to extend his pardon to the gentleman whose late indiscretion had put us in possession of the papers. Far be it from himself, the stranger said, to remain behind the age; he supposed it was the custom of the country; and this apology, as in the aforementioned case of Repudiation, must content his friends in London. It was true, he added, that some offence had been taken abroad by this truly American proceeding; but on the whole, as he found the Knickerbocker a conveyance considerably safer than the steamboat-mail, and as it was beside an immense saving in the matter of postage, he would permit us to continue the correspondence. As for those letters which we still retained in our keeping, he assured us that we were perfectly free to enlighten with them our 'Principes' or the public. Beside all this, he placed in our hands a fresh epistle, which he had intended to have sent by the next packet, but which, by his generous permission, we are happy to insert in the present number.
We trust that this will quiet the sensibilities of our Saratoga friend, and that he will return to the city with an invigorated conscience, a healthful moral sense, and a stomach improved by the waters.
Ed. Knickerbocker.
[LETTER THIRD.]
TO EDWARD MOXON, PUBLISHER, LONDON.
The fiery bark that brought your missives o'er,
Brought the sad news that Murray was no more.
From still Hoboken, where I chanced to stray,
I marked the monster belching up the bay,
And guessed (already have I learned to guess,)
From her black look, she told of some distress.
Tidings of gloom her sable streamer spoke,
And the long train of her funereal smoke;
And soon the bulletins revealed the grief:
'John Murray's dead! of book-sellers the chief!'
In all the strange events that Rumor sends,
By flood and flame, to earth's remotest ends;
War, famine, wreck, and all the varying fates
Of rising cottons or of falling states;
Revolts at home, and troubles o'er the seas,
Among the Affghans, Chartists, and Chinese;
In all the recent millions that have gone
To the dark realm, and still are hastening on,
That one small tradesman should have joined the throng
Seems a mean theme to babble of in song.
Yet such is Fame! and such the pow'r of books,
To make small names as deathless as the Duke's:[B]
Yes, the same volume that recordeth you,
Ye mighty chiefs! embalms the printer's too;
And wheresoe'er the poet's fame hath flown,
There too the poet's publisher is known;
So shall our friend enjoy, to endless ages,
An immortality of title-pages.
Ev'n here, in Scythia, where the slighted Muse
Gets but cold greeting from the rude Yahoos;
Ev'n here is faintly heard a public sigh,
Ah, that Childe Harold's accoucheur should die!
That he who made such elegant editions
Should be past help from parsons or physicians;
Dead as the most defunct of all the verse
For which erewhile he tapped his liberal purse;
No more a bargainer for true sublime,
Himself a subject for a scrap of rhyme.
Methinks I see his melancholy ghost
Near his old threshold, at his ancient post;
Watching with eager and obsequious grin,
The pensive customers that enter in.
With curious eye selecting from the throng,
Each who has dabbled in the realm of song;
And offering, as of yore, for something nice
In way of Epitaph, the market price.
And now his bones the sculptured slab lie under,
What generous bard will give him one, I wonder?
For all the golden promises he made;
For all the golden guineas that he paid;
For all the fame his counter could afford
The rev'rend pamphleteer and author-lord;
For all the tricks he taught the friendless muse;
For all his purchased papers in Reviews;
For all the pleasant stories he retailed;
For all the turtle when the stories failed;
For all the praises, all the punch he spent,
What grateful hand will deck his monument?
Campbell's too proud the compliment to grant:
Southey, for sundry weighty reasons, can't.
Should Moore attempt it, he'd be sure to damn
John's many virtues in an epigram.
Rogers' blank verse so very blank has grown,
'T would scarce be legible on Parian stone;
Wordsworth would mar it by inscribing on it
A little sermon—what he calls a sonnet.
Alas! for all the guineas that he paid,
For all the immortalities he made,
For all his venison, all his right old wine,
Will none contribute one sepulchral line?
In truth I'm sad, although I seem to laugh,
To think that John should need an epitaph.
The greatest blows bring not the truest tear,
These minor losses touch the heart more near;
As fewer drops gush over from the eyes
When heroes fall than when your valet dies;
They, of another, an immortal race,
Ne'er seemed on earth well suited with their place,
And though they yield their transitory breath,
We know their being but begins with death:
So winter ushers in the new-born year,
So the flowers perish ere the fruits appear.
When common men, when men like Murray, thus
Are snatched away, 't is taking one of us;
And more in his we feel our own decay
Than if a Wellington were snatched away.
'T is not lost genius we lament the most,
No; but the man, the old companion lost:
Who'd not give more to bring back Gilbert Gurney,
Or Smith or Matthews from their nether journey,
Than all your Miltons or your Bacons dead,
Or all the Bonapartes that ever bled?
So, were the blue rotundity of heaven
By some muck-running, outlawed comet riven,
Should any orb, say yonder blazing Mars,
Be blotted from the muster-roll of stars,
Herschel might groan, or Somerville might sigh,
But what would London care?—or you, or I?
Far more we vulgar mortals might lament,
Should some starved earthquake gulp a slice of Kent.
Now let no pigmy poet, in his pride,
The humble mem'ry of our friend deride:
More than he dreams, his little species owe
Those good allies, the Patrons of the Row:
They, only they, of all the friends who praise,
All who forgive, and all who love your lays,
Of all that flatter, all that wish you well,
Sincerely care to have your volume sell.
How oft, when Quarterlies are most severe,
And every critic aims a ready sneer,
And young Ambition just begins to cool,
And Genius half suspects himself a fool,
The placid publisher, the more they rail,
Forebodes the triumph of a speedy sale,
And gently lays the soul sustaining balm
Of twenty sovereigns in your trembling palm;
While more than speech his manner seems to say,
As bland he whispers, 'Dine with me to-day.'
Or when some doubtful bantling of your brain,
Conceived in pleasure but achieved with pain,
A bit of satire, or a play perchance,
A fresh, warm epic, or new-laid romance,
Receives from all to whom your work you show
Civil endurance, or a faint 'so so;'
When men of taste, men always made of ice,
Cool your gay fancies with a friend's advice,
And prudent fathers, yawning as you read,
Knit the sage lips, and wag the pregnant head,
And bid you stick to your molasses tierces,
And leave sweet ladies to concoct sweet verses:
How oft your Murray, with a keener eye,
Detects the gems that mid your rubbish lie;
Instructs you where to alter, where to blot,
And how to darn and patch your faulty plot;
Then bravely buys, and gives you to the town
In duodecimo, for half a crown.
And oh! how oft when some dyspeptic swain
Pours forth his agonies in sickly strain,
Mistaking, in the pangs that through him dart,
A wretched liver for a breaking heart;
And prates of passions that he never felt,
And sweats away in vain attempts to melt;
Or takes to brandy, and converts his verse,
From sad to savage, nay, begins to curse,
And raves of Nemesis and hate and hell,
And smothered woes that in his bosom swell;
When Newstead is the name his fancy gives
The snug dominion where he cheaply lives,
And aping still th' aristocratic bard,
With 'Crede Jenkins' graved upon his card,
When with his trash he hurries to the press,
Crying 'O print me! print me!' in distress,
Some bookseller, perhaps, most kindly cruel,
Uses the dainty manuscript for fuel.
Ah! Ned, hadst thou, when once with rhyme opprest,
Found such a friend, (pray pardon me the jest,)
Hadst thou but been as friendly to thyself,
Thy Poems never had adorned thy shelf.
But all is ended now! John's work is o'er;
He praises, pays, and publishes no more.
Henceforth no volume, save the Book of fate,
Shall bear for him an interest small or great:
And if in heaven his literary soul
Walk the pure pavement where the planets roll,
Few old acquaintances will greet him there,
Amid the radiant light and balmy air;
Since few of all who wrote or sang for him
Shall join the anthem of the seraphim.
Yet there might Fancy, in a mood profane,
Behold him listening each celestial strain,
Catching the cadences that sweetly fall,
Wond'ring if such would sell, below, at all,
And calculating, as they say on earth,
How much those heavenly hymns would there be worth.
Or if in Proserpine's more sultry sky
For his misdeeds the Publisher must sigh,
Though much good company about him stand,
And many an author take him by the hand,
And swarms of novelists around him press,
And many a bard return his warm caress,
Though there on all the sinners he shall gaze
Who ever wrote, or planned, or acted plays;
On all the wits, from Anna's time to ours,
Who strewed perdition's pleasant way with flowers;
On Burns, consumed with more substantial fire
Than ever love or whisky could inspire;
On Shelley, seething in a lake of lead,
And Byron stretched upon a lava bed;
Little shall he, or they, or any there,
Of magazines or morning journals care;
Little shall there be whispered or be thought,
About the last new book and what it brought;
Little of copyright and Yankee thieves,
Or any wrong that Charlie's bosom grieves;
But side by side reviewer and reviewed,
Critic and criticised must all be—stewed;
Alas! they groan—alas! compared with this,
Ev'n Blackwood's drunken surgery was bliss.
How less than little were the direst blows
Dealt by brute Gifford on his baby foes!
How light, compared with hell's eternal pain,
The small damnation was of Drury Lane!
Down! down! thou impious, dark Imagination,
Forbear the foul, the blasphemous creation;
Whate'er John's doom, in whatsoever sphere,
Wretched or blest, 't is not for us to hear.
Not many such have dignified his trade,
So boldly bargained and so nobly paid.
Oh may his own Divine Paymaster prove
As kind and righteous in the realms above!
[THE QUOD CORRESPONDENCE.]
Harry Harson.