“As it is now above a quarter of a year since I wrote to you for books, which you have not yet sent to me, I have been obliged to apply to another bookseller.
“I am much concerned at being compelled to this: I had a great regard for your father, and would not willingly break off my connexion with his son; but really you have tried my patience too far. Last year I never had from you any one new publication, until it was in the hands of all my neighbours; and I have often been under the necessity of borrowing books which I had bespoken from you months before. I hope you will take this as a warning, and that you will not use any of your other friends as you have used,
“Sir,
“Your humble servant,
“J. C.”
This reprimand had little effect upon me, because, at the time when I received it, I was intent upon an object, in comparison with which the trade of a bookseller appeared absolutely below my consideration. I was inventing a set of new taxes for the minister, for which I expected to be liberally rewarded. I was ever searching for some short cut to the temple of Fame, instead of following the beaten road.
I was much encouraged by persons intimately connected with those high in power to hope that my new taxes would be adopted; and I spent my time in attendance upon my patrons, leaving the care of my business to my foreman, a young man whose head the whole week was intent upon riding out on Sunday. With such a master and such a foreman affairs could not go on well.
My Lucy, notwithstanding her great respect for my abilities, and her confidence in my promises, often hinted that she feared ministers might not at last make me amends for the time I devoted to my system of taxation; but I persisted. The file of unanswered letters was filled even to the top of the wire; the drawer of unsettled accounts made me sigh profoundly, whenever it was accidentally opened. I soon acquired a horror of business, and practised all the arts of apology, evasion, and invisibility, to which procrastinators must sooner or later be reduced. My conscience gradually became callous; and I could, without compunction, promise, with a face of truth, to settle an account to-morrow, without having the slightest hope of keeping my word.
I was a publisher as well as a bookseller, and was assailed by a tribe of rich and poor authors. The rich complained continually of delays that affected their fame; the poor of delays that concerned their interest, and sometimes their very existence. I was cursed with a compassionate as well as with a procrastinating temper; and I frequently advanced money to my poor authors, to compensate for my neglect to settle their accounts, and to free myself from the torment of their reproaches.
They soon learned to take a double advantage of my virtues and my vices. The list of my poor authors increased, for I was an encourager of genius. I trusted to my own judgment concerning every performance that was offered to me; and I was often obliged to pay for having neglected to read, or to send to press, these multifarious manuscripts. After having kept a poor devil of an author upon the tenterhooks of expectation for an unconscionable time, I could not say to him, “Sir, I have never opened your manuscript; there it is, in that heap of rubbish: take it away, for Heaven’s sake.” No, hardened as I was, I never failed to make some compliment, or some retribution; and my compliments were often in the end the most expensive species of retribution.