PREFACE.
In one of those bright racy essays at which modern dulness delights to sneer, Hazlitt discussed the question whether the desire of posthumous fame is a legitimate aspiration; and the conclusion at which he arrived was that there is "something of egotism and even of pedantry in this sentiment." It is a true saying in literature as in morality that "he that seeketh his life shall lose it." The world cares most for those who have cared least for the world's applause. A nameless minstrel of the North Country sings a ballad that shall stir men's hearts from age to age with haunting melody; Southey, toiling at his epics, is excluded from Parnassus. Some there are who have knocked at the door of the Temple of Fame, and have been admitted at once and for ever. When Thucydides announced that he intended his history to be a "possession for all time," there was no mistaking the tone of authority. But to be enthroned in state, to receive the homage of the admiring multitude, and then to be rejected as a pretender,—that is indeed a sorry fate, and one that may well make us pause before envying literary despots their titles. The more closely a writer shrouds himself from view, the more eager are his readers to get a sight of him. The loss of an arm or a leg would be a slight price for a genuine student to pay if only he could discover one new fact about Shakespeare's history. I will not attempt to impose on the reader's credulity by professing myself eager to acquire information about the author of "Peter Wilkins" at such a sacrifice; but it would have been a sincere pleasure to me if I could have brought to light some particulars about one whose personality must have possessed a more than ordinary charm. The delightful voyage imaginaire here presented to the reader was first published in 1751.*
* Some copies are said to be dated 1750. It appears on the list of new books announced in the "Gentleman's Magazine" for November 1750.
An edition appeared immediately afterwards at Dublin; so the book must have had some sale. The introduction and the dedication to the Countess of Northumberland (to whom it will be remembered Percy dedicated his "Reliques" and Goldsmith the first printed copy of his "Edwin and Angelina") are signed with the initials "R. P.;" and for many years the author's full name was unknown. In 1835, Nicol, the printer, sold by auction a number of books and manuscripts in his possession, which had once belonged to Dodsley, the publisher; and when these were being catalogued, the original agreement * for the sale of the MS. of "Peter Wilkins" was brought to light.
* It is now in the collection, shortly to be dispersed, of the late Mr. James Crossley of Manchester, a gentleman who was esteemed throughout his long life not less for unfailing courtesy than for rare scholarship. Mr. Crossley promised to search for the document and send me a transcript of it; but his kind intention was frustrated by his death. Paltock's name is sometimes written Pultock or Poltock. There is no ground for identifying the author of "Peter Wilkins" with the "R. P., Gent.," who published in 1751 "Memoirs of the Life of Parnese, a Spanish Lady, Translated from the Spanish MS."
From this document it appeared that the author was Robert Paltock of Clement's Inn, and that he received for the copyright 20L., twelve copies of the book, and "the cuts of the first impression"(proof impressions of the illustrations). The writer's name shows him to have been, like his hero, of Cornish origin; but the authors of the admirable and exhaustive "Bibliotheca Cornubiensis" could discover nothing about him beyond the fact that he was not a bencher of Clement's Inn. That Paltock should have chosen Clement's Inn as a place of residence is not surprising. It still keeps something of its pristine repose. The sun-dial is still supported by the negro; the grass has not lost its verdure, and on August evenings the plane-trees' leaves glint golden in the sun. One may still hear the chimes at midnight as Falstaff and Justice Shallow heard them of old. Here, where only a muffled murmur comes from the work-a-day world, a man in the last century might have dreamed away his life, lonely as Peter Wilkins on the island. One can imagine the amiable recluse composing his homely romance amid such surroundings. Perhaps it was the one labour of his life. He may have come to the Inn originally with the aspiration of making fame and money; and then the spirit of cloistered calm turned him from such vulgar paths, and instead of losing his fine feelings and swelling the ranks of the plutocrats, he gave us a charming romance for our fireside. With the literary men of his day he seems to have had no intercourse. Not a single mention of him is to be found among his contemporaries, and we may be sure that he cut no brilliant figure at the club-houses. No chorus of reviewers chimed the praises of "Peter Wilkins." So far as I can discover, the "Monthly Review" was the only journal in which the book was noticed, and such criticism as the following can hardly be termed laudatory:—"Here is a very strange performance indeed. It seems to be the illegitimate offspring of no very natural conjunction, like 'Gulliver's Travels' and 'Robinson Crusoe;' but much inferior to the manner of these two performances as to entertainment or utility. It has all that is impossible in the one or impossible in the other, without the wit and spirit of the first, or the just strokes of nature and useful lessons of morality in the second. However, if the invention of wings for mankind to fly with is sufficient amends for all the dulness and unmeaning extravagance of the author, we are willing to allow that his book has some merit, and that he deserves some encouragement at least as an able mechanic, if not as a good author." But the book was not forgotten. A new edition appeared in 1783, and again in the following year. It was included in Weber's "Popular Romances," 1812, and published separately, with some charming plates by Stothard, in 1816. Within the last fifty years it has been frequently issued, entire or mutilated, in a popular form. A drama founded on the romance was acted at Covent Garden on April 16, 1827; and more than once of late years "Peter Wilkins" has afforded material for pantomimes. In 1763 a French translation (by Philippe Florent de Puisieux) appeared under the title of "Les Hommes Volants, ou les Aventures de Pierre Wilkins," which was included in vols. xxii.-xxiii. of DePerthe's "Voyages Imaginaires" ( 1788-89). A German translation was published in 1767, having for title "Die fliegenden Menschen, oder wunderbare Begebenheiten Peter Wilkins." Whether the author lived to see the translations of this work cannot be ascertained. A Robert Paltock was buried at Ryme Intrinseca Church, Dorset, in 1767, aged seventy (Hutchin's "Dorset," iv. 493-494, third edition), but it is very doubtful whether he was the author of the romance.
Paltock's fame may be said to be firmly established. An American writer, it is true, in a recent "History of Fiction," says not a word about "Peter Wilkins;" but, we must remember, another American wrote a "History of Caricature" without mentioning Rowlandson. Coleridge admired the book, and is reported to have said: "Peter Wilkins is, to my mind, a work of uncommon beauty.... I believe that 'Robinson Crusoe' and 'Peter Wilkins' could only have been written by islanders. No continentalist could have conceived either tale.... It would require a very peculiar genius to add another tale ejusdem generis to 'Robinson Crusoe' and 'Peter Wilkins.' I once projected such a thing, but the difficulty of the preoccupied ground stopped me. Perhaps La Motte Fouqué might effect something; but I should fear that neither he nor any other German could entirely understand what may be called the desert island feeling. I would try the marvellous line of 'Peter Wilkins' if I attempted it rather than the real fiction of 'Robinson Crusoe'" ("Table-Talk," 1851, pp. 331-332). Southey, in a note on a passage of the "Curse of Kehama," went so far as to say that Paltock's winged people "are the most beautiful creatures of imagination that ever were devised," and added that Sir Walter Scott was a warm admirer of the book. With Charles Lamb at Christ's Hospital the story was a favourite. "We had classics of our own," he says, "without being beholden to 'insolent Greece or haughty Rome,' that passed current among us—'Peter Wilkins,' the 'Adventures of the Hon. Captain Robert Boyle,' the 'Fortunate Blue-Coat Boy,' and the like." But nobody loved the old romance with such devotion as Leigh Hunt. He was never tired of discoursing about its beauties, and he wrote with such thorough appreciation of his subject that he left little or nothing for another to add. "It is interesting," he writes in one place, "to fancy R. P., or 'Mr. Robert Paltock of Clement's Inn,' a gentle lover of books, not successful enough, perhaps, as a barrister to lead a public or profitable life, but eking out a little employment or a bit of a patrimony with literature congenial to him, and looking oftener to 'Purchase Pilgrims' on his shelves than to 'Coke on Littleton.' We picture him to ourselves with 'Robinson Crusoe' on one side of him and 'Gaudentio di Lucca' on the other, hearing the pen go over his paper in one of those quiet rooms in Clement's Inn that look out of its old-fashioned buildings into the little garden with the dial in it held by the negro: one of the prettiest corners in London, and extremely fit for a sequestered fancy that cannot get any further. There he sits, the unknown, ingenious, and amiable Mr. Robert Paltock, thinking of an imaginary beauty for want of a better, and creating her for the delight of posterity, though his contemporaries were to know little or nothing of her. We shall never go through the place again without regarding him as its crowning interest.... Now a sweeter creature [than Youwarkee] is not to be found in books; and she does him immortal honour. She is all tenderness and vivacity; all born good taste and blessed companionship. Her pleasure consists but in his; she prevents all his wishes; has neither prudery nor immodesty; sheds not a tear but from right feeling; is the good of his home and the grace of his fancy. It has been well observed that the author has not made his flying women in general light and airy enough... And it may be said, on the other hand, that the kind of wing, the graundee, or elastic drapery which opens and shuts at pleasure, however ingeniously and even beautifully contrived, would necessitate creatures whose modifications of humanity, bodily and mental, though never so good after their kind, might have startled the inventor had he been more of a naturalist; might have developed a being very different from the feminine, sympathising, and lovely Youwarkee. Muscles and nerves not human must have been associated with inhuman wants and feelings; probably have necessitated talons and a beak! At best the woman would have been wilder, more elvish, capricious, and unaccountable. She would have ruffled her whalebones when angry; been horribly intimate, perhaps, with birds' nests and fights with eagles; and frightened Wilkins out of his wits with dashing betwixt rocks and pulling the noses of seals and gulls. ("Book for a Corner," 1868, i. 68, &c.) Could criticism be more delightful? But in the "London Journal," November 5, 1834, the genial essayist's fancy dallied even more daintily with the theme: "A peacock with his plumage displayed, full of 'rainbows and starry eyes,' is a fine object, but think of a lovely woman set in front of an ethereal shell and wafted about like a Venus.... We are to picture to ourselves a nymph in a vest of the finest texture and most delicate carnation. On a sudden this drapery parts in two and flies back, stretched from head to foot like an oval fan or an umbrella; and the lady is in front of it, preparing to sweep blushing away from us and 'winnow the buxom air.'"