Among the multitude of my college-friends was a young gentleman, whose father was just appointed to go out upon the famous embassy to China; he came to our shop to buy Du Halde; and upon hearing me express an enthusiastic desire to visit China, he undertook to apply to his father to take me in the ambassador’s suite. His representation of me as a young man of talents and literature, and the view of some botanical drawings, which I executed upon the spur of the occasion with tolerable neatness, procured me the favour which I so ardently desired.
My father objected to my making this voyage. He was vexed to see me quit the profession for which I had been educated; and he could not, without a severe struggle, relinquish his hopes of seeing me a bishop. But I argued that, as I had not yet been ordained, there could be no disgrace or impropriety in my avoiding a mode of life which was not suited to my genius. This word genius had now, as upon all other occasions, a mighty effect upon my father; and, observing this, I declared farther, in a high tone of voice, that from the experience I had already had, I was perfectly certain that the drudgery of sermon-writing would paralyze my genius; and that, to expand and invigorate my intellectual powers, it was absolutely necessary I should, to use a great author’s expression, “view in foreign countries varied modes of existence.”
My father’s hopes that one half of his prophecy would at least be accomplished, and that I should become a great author, revived; and he consented to my going to China, upon condition that I should promise to write a history of my voyage and journey, in two volumes octavo, or one quarto, with a folio of plates. The promise was readily made; for in the plenitude of confidence in my own powers, octavos and quartos shrunk before me, and a folio appeared too small for the various information, and the useful reflections, which a voyage to China must supply.
Full of expectations and projects, I talked from morning till night of my journey: but notwithstanding my father’s hourly remonstrances, I deferred my preparations till the last week. Then all was hurry and confusion; tailors and sempstresses, portmanteaus and trunks, portfolios and drawing-boxes, water-colours, crayons, and note-books, wet from the stationer’s, crowded my room. I had a dozen small note-books, and a huge commonplace-book, which was to be divided and kept in the manner recommended by the judicious and immortal Locke.
In the midst of the last day’s bustle, I sat down at the corner of a table with compass, ruler, and red ink, to divide and rule my best of all possible commonplace-books; but the red ink was too thin, and the paper was not well sized, and it blotted continually, because I was obliged to turn over the pages rapidly; and ink will not dry, nor blotting-paper suck it up, more quickly for a genius than for any other man. Besides, my attention was much distracted by the fear that the sempstress would not send home my dozen of new shirts, and that a vile procrastinating boot-maker would never come with my boots. Every rap at the door I started up to inquire whether that was the shirts, or the boots: thrice I overturned the red, and twice the black ink bottles by these starts; and the execrations which I bestowed upon those tradespeople, who will put off every thing to the last moment, were innumerable. I had orders to set off in the mail-coach for Portsmouth, to join the rest of the ambassador’s suite.
The provoking watchman cried “past eleven o’clock” before I had half-finished ruling my commonplace-book; my shirts and my boots were not come: the mail-coach, as you may guess, set off without me. My poor father was in a terrible tremor, and walked from room to room, reproaching me and himself; but I persisted in repeating that Lord M. would not set out the day he had intended: that nobody, since the creation of the world, ever set out upon a long journey the day he first appointed: besides, there were at least a hundred chances in my favour that his lordship would break down on his way to Portsmouth; that the wind would not be fair when he arrived there; that half the people in his suite would not be more punctual than myself, &c.
By these arguments, or by mere dint of assertion, I quieted my father’s apprehensions and my own, and we agreed that, as it was now impossible to go to-day, it was best to stay till to-morrow.
Upon my arrival at Portsmouth, the first thing I heard was that the Lion and Hindostan had sailed some hours before, with the embassy for China. Despair deprived me of utterance. A charitable waiter at the inn, however, seeing my consternation and absolute inability to think or act for myself, ran to make farther inquiries, and brought me back the joyful tidings that the Jackal brig, which was to carry out the remainder of the ambassador’s suite, was not yet under weigh; that a gentleman, who was to go in the Jackal, had dined at an hotel in the next street, and that he had gone to the water-side but ten minutes ago.
I hurried after him: the boat was gone. I paid another exorbitantly to take me and my goods to the brig, and reached the Jackal just as she was weighing anchor. Bad education for me! The moment I felt myself safe on board, having recovered breath to speak, I exclaimed, “Here am I, safe and sound! just as well as if I had been here yesterday; better indeed. Oh, after this, I shall always trust to my own good fortune! I knew I should not be too late.” When I came to reflect coolly, however, I was rather sorry that I had missed my passage in the Lion, with my friend and protector, and with most of the learned and ingenious men of the ambassador’s suite, to whom I had been introduced, and who had seemed favourably disposed towards me. All the advantage I might have derived from their conversation, during this long voyage, was lost by my own negligence. The Jackal lost company of the Lion and Hindostan in the Channel. As my friends afterwards told me, they waited for us five days in Praya Bay; but as no Jackal appeared, they sailed again without her. At length, to our great joy, we descried on the beach of Sumatra a board nailed to a post, which our friends had set up there, with a written notice to inform us that the Lion and Hindostan had touched on this shore on such a day, and to point out to us the course that we should keep in order to join them.
At the sight of this writing my spirits revived: the wind favoured us; but, alas! in passing the Straits of Banka, we were damaged so that we were obliged to return to port to refit, and to take in fresh provision. Not a soul on board but wished it had been their fate to have had a berth in the other ships; and I more loudly than any one else expressed this wish twenty times a-day. When my companions heard that I was to have sailed in the ambassador’s ship, if I had been time enough at Spithead, some pitied and some rallied me: but most said I deserved to be punished for my negligence. At length we joined the Lion and Hindostan at North Island. Our friends had quite given up all hopes of ever seeing us again, and had actually bought at Batavia a French brig, to supply the place of the Jackal. To my great satisfaction, I was now received on board the Lion, and had an opportunity of conversing with the men of literature and science, from whom I had been so unluckily separated during the former part of the voyage. Their conversation soon revived and increased my regret, when they told me of all that I had missed seeing at the various places where they had touched: they talked to me with provoking fluency of the culture of manioc; of the root of cassada, of which tapioca is made; of the shrub called the cactus, on which the cochineal insect swarms and feeds; and of the ipecacuanha-plant; all which they had seen at Rio Janeiro, besides eight paintings representing the manner in which the diamond and gold mines in the Brazils are worked. Indeed, upon cross-examination, I found that these pictures were miserably executed, and scarcely worth seeing.