Faery Queene, B. V. C. 3.
Shocking! I abominate the omen; απεπτυσαa. What, my two volumes, post 8vo. "vanish into nought?" Delectable news this!--No, no: Spenser may be a pretty fair prophet as prophets went in Queen Elizabeth's days: about the reviewers I hope he is: but prophets, I trust, have their weak points as well as other people. The Sortes Spenserianæ are no Sortes Virgilianæ. And, if my prayers to Neptune are heard, the case will take a different turn. I wish for no ill luck to Mr. Constable--his ship--or her cargo. I wish him a safe voyage: but I hope it is no sin to wish him a long one. It could do no harm to him--his ship--ship's company--or Florimel, if Neptune would order a tumbling sea and a good stiff South-West wind to blow them safe and sound into some excellent harbour on the coast of Norway. In that harbour, good Neptune, keep Mr. Constable for a month. By that time I and my snowy Florimel shall have transacted all our business. The two Florimels will never meet; and the fatal results of 'melting,' and 'vanishing into nought,' will thus be obviated. That done, by all means I would have Neptune take off the embargo, and let Mr. Constable out. The German Florimel will have cleared the stage; and no one will witness with more pleasure than myself the spectacle of the true Scotch Florimel resuming the girdle which she can have dropped only from accident or venial negligence.
FOOTNOTES TO "POSTSCRIPT."
[[1]] In here speaking of Sir Walter Scott by name as the author of the Constable Scotch novels, the writer would be sorry to have it supposed that he was inattentive to the courtesies of literature. Whatever disguise an author chooses to assume, it is a point of good breeding to respect it in any case where there is not some higher reason for declining to do so. In this case there is. It is now become essential to Sir Walter Scott's honour no longer to speak of the author of the Scotch novels as 'unknown.' Sir Walter is not under any necessity of avowing himself the author: but no man who does not mean to insult him is now at liberty to doubt whether he is. For Sir W. S. cannot now be supposed ignorant that he has long and universally had the credit of being the author: and a man of honour would not, even by his silence, acquiesce in the public direction to himself of praise due to some other. Consequently it is not possible to make it a question whether Sir W. S. were the author, without at the same time making it a question whether he were a man of honour. This single consideration would have saved a world of literary gossip.
[[2]] See his Anthropologie.
[[3]] K. John.
THE END.
ERRATUM.
In the Advertisement (Vol. I.) for Königsburg. read Königsberg.