“Yes! and the impertinence of dedicating such a work to the Officers of His Majesty’s Household troops! Considering the quarter from whence it proceeded, I certainly did not expect much, but still I thought that there was to be some little esprit. The poor Guards! how nervous they must have been at the announcement! What could have been the point of that dedication?”
“I remember a most interminable proser, who was blessed with a very sensible-sounding voice, and who, on the strength of that, and his correct and constant emphases, was considered by the world, for a great time, as a sage. At length it was discovered that he was quite the reverse. Mr. Puff’s wit is very like this man’s wisdom. You take up one of his little books, and you fancy, from its titlepage, that it is going to be very witty; as you proceed, you begin to suspect that the man is only a wag, and then, surprised at not ‘seeing the point,’ you have a shrewd suspicion that he is a great hand at dry humour. It is not till you have closed the volume that you wonder who it is that has had the hardihood to intrude such imbecility upon an indulgent world.”
“Come, come! Mr. Puff is a worthy gentleman. Let him cease to dusk the radiancy of Ariosto’s sunny stanzas, and I shall be the first man who will do justice to his merits. He certainly tattles prettily about tenses and terminations, and is not an inelegant grammarian.”
“Our literature, I think, is at a low ebb.”
“There is nothing like a fall of stocks to affect what it is the fashion to style the Literature of the present day, a fungus production which has flourished from the artificial state of our society, the mere creature of our imaginary wealth. Everybody being very rich, has afforded to be very literary, books being considered a luxury almost as elegant and necessary as ottomans, bonbons, and pier-glasses. Consols at 100 were the origin of all book societies. The Stockbrokers’ ladies took off the quarto travels and the hot-pressed poetry. They were the patronesses of your patent ink and your wire-wove paper. That is all past. Twenty per cent difference in the value of our public securities from this time last year, that little incident has done more for the restoration of the old English feeling, than all the exertions of Church and State united. There is nothing like a fall in Consols to bring the blood of our good people of England into cool order. It is your grand state medicine, your veritable Doctor Sangrado!
“A fall in stocks! and halt to ‘the spread of knowledge!’ and ‘the progress of liberal principles’ is like that of a man too late for post-horses. A fall in stocks! and where are your London Universities, and your Mechanics’ Institutes, and your new Docks? Where your philosophy, your philanthropy, and your competition? National prejudices revive as national prosperity decreases. If the Consols were at 60 we should be again bellowing, God save the King! eating roast beef, and damning the French.”
“And you imagine literature is equally affected, Grey?”
“Clearly. We were literary because we were rich. Amid the myriad of volumes which issued monthly from the press, what one was not written for the mere hour? It is all very well to buy mechanical poetry and historical novels when our purses have a plethora; but now, my dear fellow, depend upon it, the game is up. We have no scholars now, no literary recluses, no men who ever appear to think. ‘Scribble, scribble, scribble’ as the Duke of Cumberland said to Gibbon, should be the motto of the mighty ‘nineteenth century.’”
“Southey, I think, Grey, is an exception.”
“By no means. Southey is a political writer, a writer for a particular purpose. All his works, from those in three volumes quarto to those in one duodecimo, are alike political pamphlets.”