“What shipping concern?” inquired Peter, with a look of amazement.
“La! master,” exclaimed Ephraim, “it aint of any use to pretend to keep it a secret now, when every body knows it. I did'nt tell Mr. Pester, though, till the last, when all the goods was gone out of the shop, and the sheriff's officers had come to take possession of the house.”
“Sheriff's officers in possession of my house!” roared Peter. “All the goods gone out of the shop! What do you mean by that, you rascal? What have you been doing in my absence?” And he sprang forward furiously, and seized the trembling shopman by the collar with a degree of violence which rendered it difficult for the two officers in attendance to disengage him from his hold.
Hereupon, Mr. Snap, the attorney retained by the creditors, harangues the company at some length, and intimates that Mr. Snook is either mad, or acting the madman for the purpose of evading punishment. A practitioner from Bedlam is sent for, and some artifices resorted to—but to no purpose. It is found impossible to decide upon the question of sanity. The medical gentleman in his report to the creditors confesses himself utterly perplexed, and, without giving a decision, details the particulars of a singular story told him by Mr. Snook himself concerning the mode of his escape from drowning after he fell overboard from the “Rose in June.” “It is a strange unlikely tale to be sure,” says the physician, “and if his general conversation was of that wild imaginative flighty kind which I have so often witnessed, I should say it was purely ideal; but he appears such a plain-spoken, simple sort of a person, that it is difficult to conceive how he could invent such a fiction.” Mr. Snook's narration is then told, not in his very words, but in the author's own way, with all the particulars obtained from Peter's various recitations. This narration is singular enough but we shall give it only in petto.
Upon tumbling overboard, Mr. Snook (at least according to his own story) swam courageously as long as he could. He was upon the point of sinking, however, when an oar was thrust under his arm, and he found himself lifted in a boat by a “dozen dark looking men.” He is taken on board a large ship, and the captain, who is a droll genius, and talks in rhyme somewhat after the fashion of Frazer's Magazine, entertains him with great cordiality, dresses him in a suit of his own clothes, makes him drink in the first place a brimmer of “something hot,” and afterwards plies him with wines and liqueurs of all kinds, at a supper of the most magnificent description. Warmed in body and mind by this excellent cheer, Peter reveals his inmost secrets to his host and talks freely and minutely of a thousand things; of his man Ephraim and his oddities; of his bank account; of his great credit; of his adventures with Miss Bodkin, his prospects in trade, and especially the names, residences, et cetera, et cetera, of the wholesale houses with which he is in the habit of dealing. Presently, being somewhat overcome with wine, he goes to bed at the suggestion of the captain, who promises to call him in season for a boat in the morning which will convey him to Billingsgate in full time for Pester and Co.'s note. How long he slept is uncertain—but when he awoke a great change was observable in the captain's manner, who was somewhat brusque, and handed him over the ship's side into the barge where he was discovered by the creditors in pursuit, and which he was assured would convey him to Billingsgate.
This relation we have given in brief, and consequently it implies little or nothing. The result, however, to which the reader is ingeniously led by the author, is that the real Peter Snook has been duped, and that the Peter Snook who made the various purchases about town, and who appeared to Ephraim only during the morning and evening twilight of the eventful day, was, in fact, no other person than the captain of “the strange, black-sided ship.” We are to believe that, taking advantage of Peter's communicativeness, and a certain degree of personal resemblance to himself, be assumed our hero's clothes while he slept, and made a bold and nearly successful attempt at wholesale peculation.
The incidents of this story are forcibly conceived, and even in the hands of an ordinary writer would scarcely fail of effect. But in the present instance so unusual a tact is developed in the narration, that we are inclined to rank “Peter Snook” among the few tales which, each in their own way, are absolutely faultless. Such things, however, insignificant in themselves or their subjects, satisfy the mind of the literary critic precisely as we have known a few rude, and apparently unmeaning touches of the brush, fill with unalloyed pleasure the eye of the artist. But no—in the latter case effect is produced chiefly by arrangement, and a proper preponderance of objects. “Peter Snook” is rather a Flemish home-piece, and entitled to the very species of praise which should be awarded to the best of such pieces. The merit lies in the chiaro 'scuro—in that blending of light and shadow where nothing is too distinct, yet where the idea is fully conveyed—in the absence of all rigid outlines and all miniature painting—in the not undue warmth of the coloring—and in the slight tone of exaggeration prevalent, yet not amounting to caricature. We will venture to assert that no painter, who deserves to be called so, will read “Peter Snook” without assenting to what we say, and without a perfect consciousness that the principal rules of the plastic arts, founded as they surely are in a true perception of the beautiful, will apply in their fullest force to every species of literary composition.