Beauclerc was in due time tired of his bonne fortune, and this gave Wellesley the delicious opportunity of pressing his charmer to his faithful and doting heart with renovated rapture.
La Belle Nature!
About this time, or else some other time, a Mr. Something-doff was presented to me, hot from Russia. I forgot the beginning of his name. I recollect that he brought, at the ends of his fingers, a very odd waltz, which seemed to have been composed on purpose to warm them. I asked him, since he was on the Emperor's staff, if he had met with the General Beckendorff.
"Oh, yes!" answered he, laughing, "Beckendorff is my particular friend. He wanted to come to England with me; but he assured me he had made such a fool of himself about a woman here, Amy, I think, he called her, that he was ashamed to show his face within a thousand miles of herself or her friends."
And now my gentle readers: by-the-by, I have no idea why they are so denominated; or why authors, and good ones too, even Lady Morgan at the beginning, she is too great a swell now—I only make use of that elegant expression in humble imitation of Lord Clanricarde—once prosed a great deal about her gratitude for the kind encouragement and indulgence of the public; why in the name of common sense will authors be so very palpably false in what they profess?
Does not Lady Morgan know as well as I do, that the public never yet read one line out of charity towards her or any author breathing since the world began, nor does the kind public ever prize anything which bores them: so that, if the kind public were to cry up my book from morning till night, and suffer me to make my fortune by it, I should feel no more obliged to them than if my volumes kept their station on the shelves of Mr. Stockdale's spacious library, as regularly in a row as the apothecary s gallipots in the Honey Moon; but just the contrary. If I have the knack to amuse the public, I shall expect the public to be extremely grateful to me, and I desire that they sing my praise in prose and also in better rhymes than mine, to the end of their natural life! True, Doctor Johnson and many other good men, declare that merit is due to such authors as do their best, even when they fail; but what is the use of its being due since nobody pays! What is an author, or anybody else the better for having a parcel of bad debts on his ledger? The good Doctor seems really to be giving Lady Morgan, as well as poor Harriette, a rap on the knuckles, when he says, "No vanity can more justly incur contempt and indignation, than that which boasts of negligence and hurry." For who can bear with patience, the writer who claims such superiority to the rest of his species as to imagine mankind are at leisure for attention to his extemporary sallies. Now, for my part, I do not expect any persons to exercise their patience in bearing with me, being as morally certain as I am of my existence, that these, my temporary sallies, like other people's studied stupidity, will be equally unentertaining, without more regard or respect for the one than the other. In short, whatever contempt my vanity may incur in writing these few sketches thus without tormenting myself with quotations and deep cogitations, I shall beg to lay all the blame entirely on Stockdale, especially as he has just handed me a quotation from Cumberland, as he styles it, though I am not without suspicion that he had a hand in it himself.
As for our readers, on whom we never fail to bestow the terms of "candid," "gentle," "courteous," and others of the like soothing cast, they certainly deserve all the fair words we can give them; for it is not to be denied, but that we make occasionally very great demands upon their candour, gentleness, and courtesy, exercising them frequently and fully with such trials as require those several endowments in no small proportion.
But are there not also fastidious, angry, querulential readers? Readers with full stomachs, who complain of being surfeited and overloaded with the story-telling trash of our circulating libraries? It cannot be altogether denied: but still they are readers; if the load is so heavy upon them as they pretend it is, I will put them in the way of getting rid of it by reviving the law of the ancient Cecerteans, who obliged their artists to hawk about their several wares, carrying them on their backs till they found purchasers to ease them of the burden. Was this law put in force against authors few of us, I doubt, would be found able to stand under the weight of our own unpurchased works.
Now, gentle readers, after this long digression, you shall hear of the shocking seduction of the present Viscountess Berwick by Viscount Deerhurst!