“Says Ainsworth to Colburn,
‘A plan in my pate is,
To give my romance as
A supplement, gratis.’
Says Colburn to Ainsworth,
‘Twill do very nicely,
For that will be charging
It’s value precisely.’
“Harrison Ainsworth could not have his portrait painted, nor write a novel of crime and sensation, without being regarded as a convenient peg for pleasantry.”
There seems to have been, unluckily, a shadow of a difference with William Jerdan, of the Literary Gazette, whose diffuse and often tedious Autobiography was published in 1853. “Among incipient authors,” says Jerdan, “whom (to use a common phrase) it was in my power to ‘take by the hand’ and pull up the steep, few had heartier help than Mr. William Harrison Ainsworth, whose literary propensities were strong in youth, and who has since made so wide a noise in the world of fictitious and periodical literature. From some cause or another, which I cannot comprehend, he has given a notice to my publishers, to forbid the use of any of his correspondence in these Memoirs, though on looking over a number of his letters I can discover nothing discreditable to him, or aught of which he has reason to be ashamed.” I think it is not difficult to understand what Jerdan seemed unable to comprehend. Ainsworth did not care to have his confidential requests for good notices go out to the public. It was a weakness of his to beg for complimentary reviews and Father Prout had made the most of it; small wonder that he dreaded a repetition of the experience. Jerdan gives, however, a very kindly estimate of Ainsworth.[[22]]