You take the allegory? Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them—almost all women;—a vast number of clever, hard-headed men. Why, one of the most learned physicians in England said to me only yesterday, “I have just read So-and-So for the second time” (naming one of Jones’s exquisite fictions). Judges, bishops, chancellors, mathematicians are notorious novel readers; as well as young boys and sweet girls, and their kind, tender mothers. Who has not read about Eldon, and how he cried over novels every night when he was not at whist?
As for that lazy naughty boy at Chur, I doubt whether he will like novels when he is thirty years of age. He is taking too great a glut of them now. He is eating jelly until he will be sick. He will know most plots by the time he is twenty, so that he will never be surprised when the Stranger turns out to be the rightful earl,—when the old waterman, throwing off his beggarly gabardine, shows his stars and the collars of his various orders, and clasping Antonia to his bosom, proves himself to be the prince, her long-lost father. He will recognize the novelists’ same characters, though they appear in red-heeled pumps and ailes-de-pigeon, or the garb of the nineteenth century. He will get weary of sweets, as boys of private schools grow (or used to grow, for I have done growing some little time myself, and the practice may have ended too)—as private schoolboys used to grow tired of the pudding before their mutton at dinner.
And pray what is the moral of this apologue? The moral I take to be this: the appetite for novels extending to the end of the world;—far away in the frozen deep, the sailors reading them to one another during the endless night;—far away under the Syrian stars, the solemn sheikhs and elders hearkening to the poet as he recites his tales;—far away in the Indian camps, where the soldiers listen to ——’s tales, or ——’s, after the hot day’s march;—far away in little Chur yonder, where the lazy boy pores over the fond volume, and drinks it in with all his eyes;—the demand being what we know it is, the merchant must supply it, as he will supply saddles and pale ale for Bombay or Calcutta.
But as surely as the cadet drinks too much pale ale, it will disagree with him; and so surely, dear youth, will too much novels cloy on thee. I wonder, do novel writers themselves read many novels? If you go into Gunter’s, you don’t see those charming young ladies (to whom I present my most respectful compliments) eating tarts and ices, but at the proper evening-tide they have good plain wholesome tea and bread-and-butter. Can anybody tell me does the author of the Tale of two Cities read novels? does the author of the Tower of London devour romances? does the dashing Harry Lorrequer delight in Plain or Ringlets or Sponge’s Sporting Tour? Does the veteran, from whose flowing pen we had the books which delighted our young days, Darnley, and Richelieu, and Delorme[34] relish the works of Alexandre the Great, and thrill over the Three Musqueteers? Does the accomplished author of the Caxtons read the other tales in Blackwood? (For example, that ghost-story printed last August, and which for my part, though I read it in the public reading-room at the Pavilion Hotel at Folkestone, I protest frightened me so that I scarce dared look over my shoulder.) Does Uncle Tom admire Adam Bede; and does the author of the Vicar of Wrexhill laugh over the Warden and the Three Clerks? Dear youth of ingenuous countenance and ingenuous pudor! I make no doubt that the eminent parties above named all partake of novels in moderation—eat jellies—but mainly nourish themselves upon wholesome roast and boiled.
Here, dear youth aforesaid! our Cornhill Magazine owners strive to provide thee with facts as well as fiction; and though it does not become them to brag of their Ordinary, at least they invite thee to a table where thou shall sit in good company. That story of the Fox was written by one of the gallant seamen who sought for poor Franklin under the awful Arctic Night: that account of China is told by the man of all the empire most likely to know of what he speaks: those pages regarding Volunteers come from an honoured hand that has borne the sword in a hundred famous fields, and pointed the British guns in the greatest siege in the world.
Shall we point out others? We are fellow-travellers, and shall make acquaintance as the voyage proceeds. In the Atlantic steamers, on the first day out (and on high and holidays subsequently), the jellies set down on table are richly ornamented; medioque in fonte leporum rise the American and British flags nobly emblazoned in tin. As the passengers remark this pleasing phenomenon, the Captain no doubt improves the occasion by expressing a hope, to his right and left, that the flag of Mr. Bull and his younger Brother may always float side by side in friendly emulation. Novels having been previously compared to jellies—here are two (one perhaps not entirely saccharine, and flavoured with an amari aliquid very distasteful to some palates)—two novels under two flags, the one that ancient ensign which has hung before the well-known booth of Vanity Fair; the other that fresh and handsome standard which has lately been hoisted on Barchester Towers. Pray, sir, or madam, to which dish will you be helped?
So have I seen my friends Captain Lang and Captain Comstock press their guests to partake of the fare on that memorable “First day out,” when there is no man, I think, who sits down but asks a blessing on his voyage, and the good ship dips over the bar, and bounds away into the blue water.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] Stow quotes the inscription, still extant, “from the table fast chained in St. Peter’s Church, Cornhill;” and says “he was after some chronicle buried at London, and after some chronicle buried at Glowcester”—but oh! these incorrect chroniclers! when Alban Butler, in the Lives of the Saints, v. xii., and Murray’s Handbook, and the Sacristan at Chur, all say Lucius was killed there, and I saw his tomb with my own eyes!
[34] By the way, what a strange fate is that which has befallen the veteran novelist! He is her Majesty’s Consul-General in Venice, the only city in Europe where the famous “Two Cavaliers” cannot by any possibility be seen riding together.