CHAPTER XCIII.
REMARKS OF AN IMPATIENT READER ANTICIPATED AND ANSWERED.
Ὦ πολλὰ λέξας ἄρτι κάνόνητ᾽ ἔπη,
Οὐ μνημονεύεις οὐκέτ᾽ οὐδὲν;
SOPHOCLES.
Novel readers are sometimes so impatient to know how the story is to end, that they look at the last chapter, and so—escape, should I say—or forfeit that state of agitating suspense in which it was the author or authoress's endeavour to keep them till they should arrive by a regular perusal at the well-concealed catastrophe. It may be apprehended that persons of this temper, having in their composition much more of Eve's curiosity than of Job's patience, will regard with some displeasure a work like the present, of which the conclusion is not before them; and some perhaps may even be so unreasonable as to complain that they go through chapter after chapter without making any progress in the story. “What care the Public,” says one of these readers, (for every reader is a self-constituted representative of that great invisible body)—“what do the Public care for Astrology and Almanacks, and the Influence of the Tides upon diseases, and Mademoiselle des Roches's flea, and the Koran, and the Chronology of this fellow's chapters, and Potteric Carr, and the Corporation of Doncaster, and the Theory of Signatures, and the Philosophy of the Alchemists, and the Devil knows what besides! What have these things to do with the subject of the book, and who would ever have looked for them in a Novel?”
“A Novel do you call it, Mr. Reader?”
“Yes, Mr. Author, what else should I call it? It has been reviewed as a Novel and advertised as a Novel.”
“I confess that in this very day's newspaper it is advertised in company with four new Novels; the first in the list being ‘Warleigh, or the Fatal Oak,’ a Legend of Devon, by Mrs. Bray: the second, ‘Dacre,’ edited by the Countess of Morley; Mr. James's ‘Life and Adventures of John Marston Hall,’ is the third: fourthly, comes the dear name of ‘The Doctor;’ and last in the list, ‘The Court of Sigismund Augustus, or Poland in the Seventeenth Century.’”
I present my compliments to each and all of the authoresses and authors with whom I find myself thus associated. At the same time I beg leave to apologize for this apparent intrusion into their company, and to assure them that the honour which I have thus received has been thrust upon me. Dr. Stegman had four patients whose disease was that they saw themselves double: “they perceived,” says Mr. Turner, “another self, exterior to themselves!” I am not one of Dr. Stegman's patients; but I see myself double in a certain sense, and in that sense have another and distinct self,—the one incog, the other out of cog. Out of cog I should be as willing to meet the novelist of the Polish Court, as any other unknown brother or sister of the quill. Out of cog I should be glad to shake hands with Mr. James, converse with him about Charlemagne, and urge him to proceed with his French biography. Out of cog I should have much pleasure in making my bow to Lady Morley or her editee. Out of cog I should like to be introduced to Mrs. Bray in her own lovely land of Devon, and see the sweet innocent face of her humble friend Mary Colling. But without a proper introduction I should never think of presenting myself to any of these persons; and having incog the same sense of propriety as out of cog, I assure them that the manner in which my one self has been associated with them is not the act and deed of my other self, but that of Messrs. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, my very worthy and approved good publishers.