PISISTRATUS (startled).—“The title! By the soul of Cervantes! I have never yet thought of a title!”
CAPTAIN ROLAND (solemnly).—“There is a great deal in a good title. As a novel reader, I know that by experience.”
MR. SQUILLS.—“Certainly; there is not a catchpenny in the world but what goes down, if the title be apt and seductive. Witness ‘Old Parr’s Life Pills.’ Sell by the thousand, Sir, when my ‘Pills for Weak Stomachs,’ which I believe to be just the same compound, never paid for the advertising.”
MR. CAXTON.—“Parr’s Life Pills! a fine stroke of genius. It is not every one who has a weak stomach, or time to attend to it if he have. But who would not swallow a pill to live to a hundred and fifty-two?”
PISISTRATUS (stirring the fire in great excitement).—“My title! my title!—what shall be my title?”
MR. CAXTON (thrusting his hand into his waistcoat, and in his most didactic of tones).—“From a remote period, the choice of a title has perplexed the scribbling portion of mankind. We may guess how their invention has been racked by the strange contortions it has produced. To begin with the Hebrews. ‘The Lips of the Sleeping’ (Labia Dormientium)—what book did you suppose that title to designate?—A Catalogue of Rabbinical Writers! Again, imagine some young lady of old captivated by the sentimental title of ‘The Pomegranate with its Flower,’ and opening on a Treatise on the Jewish Ceremonials! Let us turn to the Romans. Aulus Gellius commences his pleasant gossipping ‘Noctes’ with a list of the titles in fashion in his day. For instance, ‘The Muses’ and ‘The Veil,’ ‘The Cornucopia,’ ‘The Beehive,’ and ‘The Meadow.’ Some titles, indeed, were more truculent, and promised food to those who love to sup upon horrors,—such as ‘The Torch,’ ‘The Poniard,’ ‘The Stiletto’—”
PISISTRATUS (impatiently).—“Yes, sir, but to come to My Novel.”
MR. CAXTON (unheeding the interruption).—“You see you have a fine choice here, and of a nature pleasing, and not unfamiliar, to a classical reader; or you may borrow a hint from the early dramatic writers.”
PISISTRATUS (more hopefully).—“Ay, there is something in the Drama akin to the Novel. Now, perhaps, I may catch an idea.”
MR. CAXTON.—“For instance, the author of the ‘Curiosities of Literature’ (from whom, by the way, I am plagiarizing much of the information I bestow upon you) tells us of a Spanish gentleman who wrote a Comedy, by which he intended to serve what he took for Moral Philosophy.”