Alas! there were some excellent reasons against such a consummation. So, respected reader, whatever liberties we might take with you, we had to look nearer home, and bethink us of ourselves. After all—and what a glorious charge to the jury of one’s conscience is your after all!—-what a plenary indulgence against all your sins of commission and omission!—what a makepeace to self-accusation, and what a salve to heartfelt repinings!—after all, we did know a great deal about O’Leary: his life and opinions, his habits and haunts, his prejudices, pleasures, and predilections: and although we never performed Boz to his Johnson, still had we ample knowledge of him for all purposes of book-writing; and there was no reason why we should not assume his mantle, or rather his Macintosh, if the weather required it.
Having in some sort allayed our scruples in this fashion, and having satisfied our conscience by the resolve, that if we were not about to record the actual res gesto of Mr. O’Leary, neither would we set down anything which might not have been one of his adventures, nor put into his mouth any imaginary conversations which he might not have sustained; so that, in short, should the volume ever come under the eyes of the respected gentleman himself, considerable mystification would exist, as to whether he did not say, do, and think, exactly as we made him, and much doubt lie on his mind that he was not the author himself.
We wish particularly to lay stress on the honesty of these our intentions—the more, as subsequent events have interfered with their accomplishment; and we can only assure the world of what we would have done, had we been permitted. And here let us observe, en passant, that if other literary characters had been actuated by similarly honourable views, we should have been spared those very absurd speeches which Sallust attributes to his characters in the Catiline conspiracy; and another historian, with still greater daring, assumes the Prince of Orange ought to have spoken, at various epochs in the late Belgian revolution.
With such prospective hopes, then, did we engage in the mystery of these same “Loiterings,” and with a pleasure such as only men of the pen can appreciate, did we watch the bulky pile of MS. that was growing up before us, while the interest of the work had already taken hold of us; and whether we moved our puppets to the slow figure of a minuet, or rattled them along at the slap-dash, hurry-scurry, devil-may-care pace, for which our critics habitually give us credit, we felt that our foot beat time responsively to the measure, and that we actually began to enjoy the performance.
In this position stood matters, when early one morning in December the post brought us an ominous-looking epistle, which, even as we glanced our eye on the outside, conveyed an impression of fear and misgiving to our minds. If there are men in whose countenances, as Pitt remarked, “villany is so impressed, it were impiety not to believe it,” so are there certain letters whose very shape and colour, fold, seal, and superscription have something gloomy and threatening—something of menace and mischief about them. This was one of these: the paper was a greenish sickly-white, a kind of dyspeptic foolscap; the very mill that fabricated it might have had the shaking ague. The seal was of bottle-wax, the impression, a heavy thumb. The address ran, “To H. L.” The writing, a species of rustic paling, curiously interwoven and gnarled, to which the thickness of the ink lent a needless obscurity, giving to the whole the appearance of something like a child’s effort to draw a series of beetles and cockroaches with a blunt stick; but what most of all struck terror to our souls, was an abortive effort at the words “Arthur O’Leary” scrawled in the corner.
What! had he really then escaped the perils of blubber and black men? Was he alive, and had he come back to catch us, in delicto—in the very fact of editing him, of raising our exhausted exchequer at his cost, and replenishing our empty coffers under his credit? Our suspicions were but too true. We broke the seal and spelled as follows—
“Sir—A lately-arrived traveller in these parts brings me intelligence, that a work is announced for publication by you, under the title of ‘The Loiterings of Arthur O’Leary,’ containing his opinions, notions, dreamings, and doings during several years of his life, and in various countries. Now this must mean me, and I should like to know what are a man’s own, if his adventures are not? His ongoings, his ‘begebenheiten,’ as the Germans call them, are they not as much his, as his—what shall I say; his flannel waistcoat or his tobacco-pipe?
“If I have spent many years, and many pounds (of tobacco) in my explorings of other lands, is it for you to reap the benefit? If I have walked, smoked, laughed, and fattened from Trolhatten to Tehran, was it that you should have the profit? Was I to exhibit in ludicrous situations and extravagant incidents, with ‘illustrations by Phiz,’ because I happened to be fat, and fond of rambling? Or was it my name only that you pirated, so that Arthur O’Leary should be a type of something ludicrous, wherever he appeared in company? Or worse still, was it an attempt to extort money from me, as I understand you once before tried, by assuming for one of your heroes the name of a most respectable gentleman in private life? To which of these counts do you plead guilty?
“Whatever is your plan, here is mine: I have given instructions to my man of law to obtain an injunction from the Chancellor, restraining you or any other from publishing these ‘Loiterings.’ Yes; an order of the court will soon put an end to this most unwarrantable invasion of private rights. Let us see then if you’ll dare to persist in this nefarious scheme.
“The Swan-river for you, and the stocks for your publisher, may, perhaps, moderate your literary and publishing ardour—eh! Master Harry? Or do you contemplate adding your own adventures beyond seas to the volume, and then make something of your ‘Confessions of a Convict,’ I must conclude at once: in my indignation this half hour, I have been swallowing all the smoke of my meerschaum, and I feel myself turning round and round like a smoke-jack. Once for all—stop! recall your announcement, burn your MS., and prostrate yourself in abject humility at my feet, and with many sighs, and two pounds of shag (to be had at No. 8, Francis-street, two doors from the lane), you may haply be forgiven by yours, in wrath,