There is no living with thee, nor without thee.”
Or, in defense of his desultory style—half-way between the frisking pirouettes of Harlequin, and the staid pace of the moraliser, he might have borrowed a circumlocutory sentence from the bungling Locke—“I would have him try whether he can keep one unvaried, single idea in his mind without any other, for any considerable length of time.”
Or, having in his mind the stolidity of those, who condescended gravely to condemn so trifling a jeu d’esprit, he might have taken to his aid a sarcasm from Smollett—“Some formidable critics declared that the work was void of humor, character, and sentiment.”
Or, revolving in his thoughts the mystery attending the appearance of the first number, and the pining curiosity excited to unveil its paternity, with flattered pride, he might have quoted a splendid sentence from Count Fathom—“Over and above this important secret, under which he was begotten, other particularities attended his birth, and seemed to mark him out as uncommon among the sons of men.”—These “ancient instances” will suffice, my reader, if you are in a yielding mood, to convince you that, if Tristram is called upon somewhat often, it is less a matter of necessity, than of choice. I am doubting whether it would not be a most Machiavelian stroke of diplomatic wisdom, to persuade you that I perceive all my failings. Surely your admiration at my frankness would outweigh your anger at the repetition of my sins. I am sometimes affected, and, now and then, I perpetrate a verbicide. I like to make new words—I feel for them the affection of a father. I am slightly tinctured with the sin mentioned by Boileau. (L’Art Poetique. Chant Troisieme.)
“Souvent, sans y penser, un écrivain qui s’aime,
Forme tous ses héros semblables à soi-meme.”
Which lines the Il-literati are to know mean, “A self-complacent writer often inadvertently draws his heroes like himself.” Thus I, forgetting the precise terms of the conversators, (there ought to be such a word,) make them parley in a brogue very like my own. I am, moreover, somewhat vain, though less so than Ovid, or Horace, (Vide Metam. lib. 15. in fine. and Hor. 2.20 3.30.) or than that Etrurian Spurinna, whom Valerius Maximus cites as an instance of modesty, though he was rather an example of uncommon self-inflation; since he thought himself so killing, that he disfigured his face, lest he should unwittingly seduce his fair country-women!
I would that I could affirm with Falstaff in the play, “I am not only witty in myself, but I am likewise the cause that wit is in other men.” But the protasis will, I fear, be doubted by the judicious, and my own observation tells me that the apodosis is false. I am naturally neither contemptuous nor malicious, but when I look around me, and behold so many with but two ideas, “one for superfluity and one for use,” and reflect that I may myself rank among that soulless number, I become almost a misanthrope, and quite a scorner. “Les diseurs des bons mots,” says Pascal, “sont mauvais caractères.” “The perpetrators of witticisms are bad men.” Yet the same author observes, that silence is the severest punishment, and, since novelty is all that can gain one notoriety at the present day, I know not why I should not attempt to be new, at least, if not witty. I sometimes think I would rather give utterance to a brilliant error than a stupid truth, and, like Tully, espouse falsehood with a Plato, rather than be right with the rabble. “Had the nose of Cleopatra been shorter,” remarks an eminent writer, “the face of the world had been altered.” (Her face would have been, at any rate.) Had I, too, been born at an earlier era, before the fingers of a million had compressed every square inch of this vast globe’s surface, till it is as dry and hopeless as the peel of an eviscerated orange, I, too, might have been at once original and wise. But all truths have of late become truisms, and to reiterate them would be like praising Shakspeare. Sufficient be it for me, (you will find the thought somewhere in Irving,) if, like a skillful physician, who gives you a pill enveloped in some palate-tickling sauce, I now and then, under the guise of folly, pop down your throat a sound moral, or a wholesome truth. My writings, if less grave in appearance, will be more healthful in effect than Bellamy’s learned computation of the earth’s inhabitants during the millennium, (whom he makes so numerous that they would be compelled to lie in strata,) or the labored inquiry of the ingenious Spaniard, whether it be more certain that a cause will produce an effect, or that an effect must spring from a cause. Pardon these patch-work prolegomena—remembering that it is my fashion to place my thoughts in Mosaic—and pass on to my compeers of the club.
Apple. “Well, Pulito, time flies, or,” (looking learnedly,) “tempus fugit, as the Latins would say. If Quod and you are coming to the point, I’ll e’en light my cigar, and listen with elongated and patent ears.” (Here, after a series of wicked bantering, Apple was forced to explain that patent meant open—he then continued pettishly,) “I really thought you could see through a joke sooner—but if you are not about to discuss, I’ll read to Tristo a few chapters of my Psychological Autobiography, in which I have shown by induction that punning may become a second nature, and that in numerous consecutive instances—”
Tristo. “Enough, good Apple; I perceive the plan of your work, and doubt not that it is profoundly amusing, and amusingly profound. But why wish to read it to me, rather than to Nescio, or Pulito?”