(To be continued.)
THE FARRAGO.
Nº. VI.
Stephen and you are now both even,
Stephen cheats you, and you cheat Stephen.
PARODY OF A NOTED EPIGRAM.
In the highlands of Scotland, when a benighted traveller knocks at a cottage door, and is denied admittance by a female voice, he never dreams of grumbling at the refusal, if the Caledonian dame subjoin, in her country’s phrase, that she is a lone woman. Should some carping critic look through my lattice, and censure me for sameness of sentiment, or barrenness of fancy, I would reply, in an accent of deprecation—Mr. Zoilus, I am a lone author. In the periodical publications of Great Britain, the papers are usually furnished by the members of a literary society, who assemble at some coffee-house or tavern, and club their genius to amuse the public, as they club their cash to discharge their reckoning. Those speculations, which have improved, and have gladdened life, were rarely the fruit of a single brain, but the offspring of wit in conjunction. The union of abilities is almost as essential to the perfection of a miscellany, as the union of sexes to the formation of our being. Both Genius and Dullness are prone to court alliances.—Beaumont and Fletcher, composed comedies in company; and Sternhold, when he undertook a translation of David’s psalms, employed Hopkins to eke out his metre. Relying on his native strength, Dr. Johnson composed a series of lucubrations himself; but who is endowed with the comprehensive mind of the author of the Rambler? Like a poor man loaded with a fardel of debt, common writers are glad to borrow. Cursed occasionally with a penury of thought, and most willing to pay my public debt, I solicit a hint from one, a sentiment from another, and a subject from a third. Conscious of imbecility, I dread stumbling in my solitary walk, and timidity warns me to lean, sometimes on the staff of quotation, and sometimes, to employ a guide. My acquaintance, Adage, who loves sentences short and pithy, like himself, and who has read with diligence, and who admires with judgment, the PROMPTER, requests me to compose an essay in his laconic style. No, I replied, he has exhausted Franklinisms, he has commented upon almost every common saying in the popular mouth. Your reasons, Adage rejoined, are like Gratiano’s in the Merchant of Venice; they are two grains of wheat, hid in two bushels of chaff, you shall search all day ere you find them, and when found, they are not worth the search. Be it my task to furnish a subject, to take the pen and write quickly be thine. My neighbour Crispin, quoth Adage, contracted last week with a countryman for cheese. It was damaged; Crispin gives five pence per lb. and promises to pay in leather. I thought he was over-reached; but, when the cheese-monger had departed, Crispin laughingly cries, “if his cheese is mouldy, my leather is unmerchantable, and two cheats make an even bargain.” As the PROMPTER, continued Adage, never preached a sermon from that text, and as, to continue the allusion, the bishop is slumbering in his stall, do you become his chaplain, and ascend the pulpit yourself.
Reflecting on my friends advice, I quickly perceived that this even bargain was concluded by many characters besides professional cheats. An old London magazine, which I read many years ago, and which memory just handed me, offers the first example.