“Yes: and not only with what passed here, even setting that aside, though there was mischief enough here; but you have quite undone me since!”
I begged him to let me understand how.
“I will,” he cried. “When the trial broke up for the recess I went into the country, purposing to give my whole time to study and business; but, most unfortunately, I had just sent for a new set of ‘Evelina;’ and intending only to look at it, I was so cruelly caught that I could not let it out of my hands, and have been living with nothing but the Branghtons ever since.”
I could not but laugh, though on this subject ’tis always awkwardly.
“There was no parting with it,” he continued. “I could not shake it off from me a moment!—see, then, every way, what mischief you have done me!”
He ran on to this purpose much longer, with great rapidity, and then, suddenly, stopping, again said, “But I have yet another quarrel with you, and one you must answer. How comes it that the moment you have attached us to the hero and the heroine—the instant you have made us cling to them so that there is no getting disengaged—twined, twisted, twirled them round our very heart-strings—how is it that then you make them undergo such persecutions? There is really no enduring their distresses, their Suspenses, their perplexities. Why are you so cruel to all around—to them and their readers?”
I longed to say—Do you object to a persecution?—but I know he spells it prosecution.
I could make no answer: I never can. Talking over one’s own writings seems to me always ludicrous, because it cannot be impartially, either by author or commentator; one feeling, the other fearing, too much for strict truth and unaffected candour.
When we found the subject quite hopeless as to discussion, he changed it, and said “I have lately seen some friends of yours, and I assure you I gave you an excellent character to them: I told them you were firm, fixed, and impenetrable to all conviction.”
An excellent character, indeed! He meant to Mr. Francis and Charlotte.