John de Lancaster: a novel; vol. II.

by Richard Cumberland

I am not sure of that. Friendship can sanctify many things, but not all. An equipoise of favours is essential to friendship, but an overweight throws it out of its balance: it then becomes patronage, and the party obliged incurs a debt, which although it be the debt of gratitude, entails a duty upon him, and is not of the true spirit of friendship. Therefore it is that a king can hardly have a real friend—“Gods, how I should love Augustus, said a certain Roman, if he were not Cæsar.” The anecdote is to the point of my remark.

I dare say it is, said the Colonel, but I cannot exactly understand how it applies to the point in question.

If you allude to the question whether my grandson John should accept the horse, that is settled; there cannot be two opinions in that case: favours of that sort are not to be refused.

I rejoice to hear it, rejoined the colonel, for I consider it as an earnest of future favours, when my friend John shall be of age to take the duties of our county member on himself, unanimously chosen.

Ah my good friend, said the old man and sighed, that day is distant, and that chance is doubtful: in the meantime my all depends upon a single stake, and though your worthy son is he of all mankind, in whom I can repose the fullest trust, yet in the life of that beloved youth, on whom I rest my hopes, there is a period yet to pass full of alarm and danger. John has an ardent spirit, and I fear is much more likely to resent affronts than treat them with contempt. If this malicious Owen is to live amongst us, and persist in his unworthy practices, I can foresee the time must come, when my brave boy will bring him to account. Who can prevent it? not the donors of his horse; their handsome present may repair his loss, but will it make atonement for the insult he has received? What can I do? I am not the man to talk to him: young as he is, he has possessed himself of my sentiments, and I cannot retract what I have said. Talk to him yourself; you are a soldier, and upon a point of honour no man can speak with more authority: try if you can persuade him to think as you do.

Were I to do that, my good sir, replied the colonel, I fear your grandson would not derive security of person from the rules of practice, that men of my profession are compelled to follow; but I can hold my tongue, and that is quite as much as I will undertake for in any case, where the honour of your family is brought into question. I love your gallant boy; every body loves him; but what I would not say to my own son, I could not say to him. I am however inclined to believe that Sir David Owen will in no future time find resolution to insult your grandson; but, if he does, I cannot find resolution to dissuade him from taking proper notice of it.

Well! let it pass, resumed De Lancaster. My boy must take his fate. I had no right to look for other sentiments from you, and if they are, as I suspect, irreconcilable to reason and religion, we are both of us I fear in the same condemnation.

If in the long course of my literary labours I had been less studious to adhere to nature and simplicity, I am perfectly convinced I should have stood higher in estimation with the purchasers of copy rights, and probably been read and patronized by my contemporaries in the proportion of ten to one. To acquire a popularity of name, which might set the speculating publishers upon out-bidding one another for an embryo work (perhaps in meditation only) seems to be as proud and enviable a pre-eminence as human genius can arrive at: but if that pre-eminence has been acquired by a fashion of writing, that luckily falls in with the prevailing taste for the romantic and unnatural, that writer, whosoever he may be, has only made his advantage of the present hour, and forfeited his claim, upon the time to come: having paid this tribute to popularity, he certainly may enjoy the profits of deception, and take his chance for being marked out by posterity (whenever a true taste for nature shall revive) as the misleader and impostor of the age he lived in.

The circulation of a work is propagated by the cry of the many; its perpetuity is established by the fiat of the few. If we have no concern for our good name after we have left this world, how do we greatly differ from the robber and assassin?—But this is nothing but an old man’s prattle. Nobody regards it—We will return to our history.