And of the other tales we find the following from the pen of the celebrated Mr. St. John, when he was editor of the Sunday Times. He speaks of the three tales together:—
"In every page of this work there is something which a reader would wish to bear in his memory for ever. For power of animated description, for eloquent reflections upon the events of everyday life, and for soft, touching, pathetic appeals to the best feelings of the heart, these tales are worthy of a place on every library table in the kingdom. They are well calculated to add to the author's already established reputation."
Of this trilogy of tales, undoubtedly the best is the "Crock of Gold:" "The Twins," though written from living models, is very inferior, as the hero is too goody-goody and the villain too hopelessly wicked: "Heart" has more merit, and has been much praised by a celebrated authoress for its touching chapter on Old Maids. Much of it also is autobiographical, as with "The Twins."
CHAPTER XVI.
ÆSOP SMITH.
"Æsop Smith's Rides and Reveries" is one of the books which, really written by me from beginning to end, is nominally only edited. It is a volume of self-experiences, to be read "through the lines,"—and almost every incident and character therein is drawn from living models and actual facts. It grew naturally out of the simple circumstance that I used daily to ride out alone on one of my horses—more exactly, mares—Minna and Brenda, and jotted down my cantering fancies in prose or verse when I got home. Hurst & Blackett were its publishers in 1858,—and it soon was all sold off, but did not come to a second edition in London, though reproduced widely in New York and Philadelphia. The fact is that, between an independent publisher who sells a little over cost price, and a Gargantua purchaser of thousands at a time, like Smith or Mudie, the poor author is sacrificed: he has received his fee for the edition (I got £100 for this first and only) and forthwith finds himself dismissed, while the reading public is made glad by easy perusal instead of costly purchase: and thus he is cheated of his second edition. Most authors know how their interests are affected wholesale by that modern system of subscription libraries: but cheapness pleases the voracious multitude, and so in this competitive free-trade era the units who feed those devourers are swallowed up themselves. However, "what must be, must,"—che sara sara,—and I care not even to complain of what cannot be helped, and wins fame to the one, whilst it does good to the many, though financially unprofitable to individual authorship.
In the scarce copy of "Æsop Smith" now before me, I find a few manuscript notes of mine perhaps worth transcribing. One has it, "This book is actually autobiographical; but (as Rabelais did) I often mix up irrelevant and extraneous matter by way of gilding pills, &c., and that &c. is like one of Coke's upon Littleton, full of hints to be amplified." Further, "Let readers remember that this book was written and published long before recent changes in our laws of marriage and divorce and libel: also when no Englishman dared to go bearded, and no civilian was permitted to be armed. In advocacy of all these things and many more, then unheard of but now common, I was in advance of the age; and in some degree my private notions conduced to very wholesome public changes." Again: "When Rabelais is diffuse, or a buffoon, or worse, it may be to throw disputers off the scent as to his real mark of satire or philosophy. Perhaps, like Liguori, Æsop has written a book for the sake of a sentence, and veils his true intent in a designed mist of all sorts of miscellaneous matter. I shan't tell you clearly, but you may guess for yourselves." The book includes a hundred and thirty original fables, essayettes, anecdotes, tirades, songs, and musings, all of which thronged my brain as I cantered along, and were set down in black and white as soon as I got home. Stay: some were even pencilled in the saddle,—in especial this, which became very popular afterwards, particularly in the charming musical composition thereof by Mrs. Stafford Bush, and as sung by Mr. Fox at St. James's Hall and elsewhere. It was printed in an earliest edition of my Ballads and Poems (Hall & Virtue), and is headed there, "Written in the saddle on the crown of my hat." I reproduce it here for the sake of that heading, though it occurs also in my extant volume of poems without it:—
The Early Gallop.
"At five on a dewy morning,
Before the blaze of day,
To be up and off on a high-mettled horse,
All care and danger scorning,
Over the hills away,—
To drink the rich sweet breath of the gorse,
And bathe in the breeze of the downs.—
Ha! man, if you can,—match bliss like this
In all the joys of towns!