“English Bards and Scotch Reviewers”
A Poetical Satire
By a Noble Lord Travelling Abroad.
A few copies of this work
(Suppressed by the Author at great expense)
which can be bought nowhere else in London—1 guinea.
“Devil take the blackguard!” blurted Sheridan. He followed the other into the musty shop where a stooped, agate-eyed old man laid aside a black-letter volume of Livy’s Roman History and shuffled forward to greet them.
Gordon’s face was pallid and his eyes were sparkling. He had written the book the pasteboard advertised in a fit of rage that had soon cooled to shame of its retaliative scorn. He had believed every copy procurable destroyed before he left England. He had thought of this fact often with self-congratulation, dreaming this monument of his youthful petulance rooted out. To-day it was almost the first thing he confronted. The sedulous greed that hawked his literary indiscretion to the world roused now an old murderous fury that had sometimes half-scared him in his childhood. He was battling with this as he pointed out the second item of the sign.
“How many of these have you?” he asked the proprietor shortly.
“Twelve.”
“I will take them all.” Gordon put a bank-note on the counter.
The bookseller regarded him sagely as he set the books before him. It was a good day’s bargain.
A doorway led from the shop into a binding-room, where stood a stove with glue-pots heating upon it. With a word to Sheridan, Gordon seized his purchase and led the way into this room. The dealer stared and followed.
He saw the purchaser tear the books cover from cover, and thrust them one by one into the fiery maw of the stove. And now, at the stranger’s halting step and the beauty of his face, sudden intelligence came to him. Five—ten—twenty guineas apiece he could have got, if he had only found the wit to guess! The knowledge turned his parchment visage saffron with suppressed cupidity, anger and regret.
The bell in the outer room announced a customer, and the bookseller went into the shop, leaving the door ajar. Through it came a voice—a lady’s inquiry. She was asking for a copy of the Satire whose pages were shrivelling under Sheridan’s regretful eye.