a shoemaker or tailor, on Saturday | imputed the faults in his Fleece tő its being written in a fenny country. De Foe says of King Wil liam's genius: Batavian climates nourish'd him awhile; Young complains that his verse and why, Mr. Editor, am not I to be indulged in my whims and caprices? But enough of this, as your readers must be more pleased when I talk of myself, than when I speak of Messrs. Shakspeare, Young, Descartes, &c. &c.: I shall therefore proceed to indulge them. night. We, Mr. Editor, we sons of the pen, the offspring of Phoebus, cannot write at all times and in all seasons. Authors have been allowed their vagaries, and the slightest works are not the production of a minute. Of my brother authors, we have many instances on record of their dilatoriness. Goldsmith composed his poems by slow and labo-coveries, took refuge in Holland; rious efforts: Churchill, though a versifier at fifteen, was not known as a poet till thirty: Sterne did not display himself as an original genius till a late period of life: the immortal work of Montesquieu was the occupation of twenty years: the wit of Butler was far from being extemporaneous, but painfully elaborated from notes which he incessantly accumulated*: Rousseau's Emilius was the fruit of twenty years' meditations: Addison, whose Spectator Young calls" a chance amusement," collected his materials in three folio volumes before he published them; and Dr. Drake, and a thousand others, will tell us, what age our immortal bard, Shakspeare, had attained before he printed his divine breathings. If these great men, then, were so long ere their Muses were delivered, surely the Recollections of a would-be Author may be allowed some time in the pains of parturi tion. Our inclinations, besides, do not always wait upon our need: we children of the sun have to contend with air and climate, and a thousand other circumstances. Dyer * Vide D'Israeli's Calamities of Authors: but where did he learn this trait of Butler? All his biographers are silent on this head. On my return from Cornhill, when I arrived at my lodgings I began to turn over coolly in my mind the occurrences of the day, in which all that had been unpleasant subsided in the satisfaction, that my poetry was at length to see the light, and that the title-page would inform the world, who had condescended to furnish it with amusement: the disgraceful part of my adventure, that of being seized as a person suspected of anonymous libels, was easily got over, as one of those calamities, though hinted at by D'Israeli, which we authors sometimes have to encounter. With what anxiety did I wait for the 1st of the following month! and in the mean time I read and wrote: I verily believe that Mr. Randal cursed the hour in which he was so weak as to encourage me in my mania, not that I was not a considerable loser. Alas! sir, submitting my effusions to this partial friend made woful havoc in my wine-cellar; for at the end of the week, and there were three more to come, I found but one solitary bottle lurking at the bottom of the saw-dust. Well, sir, what of that? Was it for me, a genius, to count bottles as they were emptied, or to heed paltry cash? Did Otway, or Steele, or Shenstone, or Savage, or Dermady, or Sheridan, ever think of money? No, sir; nor would I! Enraptured with the adoration of the celestial Nine, though scorning to drink their beverage, I wrote and drank, till Mr. Crackenthorpe, my wine-merchant, was waited upon for another dozen of his three years' old crusted port, alias hot sloe-juice. are disappointing no common person."-"Yes, sir," answered the pert shopman; " and I do know, too, that if I disappoint Mr. Didapper, he will come here and blow me up."-" Blow you up, Demy, what do you mean?"-"Yes, he'll kick up a fine hullebelaro," was the reply. -"And pray," I added, "what can make him so anxious to see it? Does he write any of the matter?"-" Lord bless me," said Demy, "he write, sir! No, sir: do you?" I crimsoned ruby red. “No, Mr. Gilliflower," he continued ; "but he is always so anxious to see all the new bankrupts, and the like of that, with the dividends, and what not."-" Bankrupts, and dividends, and what not!" I exclaim. ed with disdain; while, during this colloquy, I was trying to get a peep at my beloved lines, as they might Will you believe it, Mr. Editor, F found them not. At length, squeezed in among the answers to correspondents, I read, "We regret that the pressure of temporary matter obliges us to defer printing Mr. Gilliflower's beautiful lines, Day lingered after day, till at length, sir, I beheld the dear wet blue wrapper issue from the parcel of the stationer. "See here," I exclaimed, "I have it!" Not Aris-lie perdue within an uncut page. totle after he had completed his Poetics, nor Sir Richard Arkwright when he discovered the principle of his spinning-jenny, norzounds! never mind who were so delighted at having gained the object they had long sought after, as I was in beholding the dear Maga-but they shall certainly be inserted zine; suffice it to say, that none were ever more transported. I was about to carry it off in triumph, to gloat on it at home, when Mr. Demy declared that he could not spare it, for Mr. Didapper over the way had bespoken it; "and it has quite slip-ishly, "Here, Mr. Demy, pray do ped my memory," continued he, "to order one, sir, for you.""Slipped your memory, Mr. Demy!" I cried, elevating myself on my heels: "do you know," continued I, with an air of contempt, "are you aware of the consequence of your misconduct? You in our next."- -"Alas!" I uttered mournfully, "what is so thin, so tender, so full of feeling, as a poet's skin?" I cursed the editor's "regrets;" and throwing down the now useless number, exclaimed peev not disappoint Mr. Didapper of his bankrupts, dividends, and what not.” I crawled sullenly out of the shop, and retired in dudgeon to my apartment. After conning over this "Notice to correspondents" several times, I recollected, that had I looklled carefully over every page, I might yet have found it, spite of the notice to the contrary; till at length, my aspirations vibrating between "regret" and the " beautiful lines," my mind found repose in the latter, and I sought further consolation in the works of some disappointed author like myself, until my wonted placidity returned. I am fully aware, Mr. Editor, that you, and many of your readers; will think me too prosing and too particular in my detail; but I am determined, that after my decease the public shall not be at any trouble in appropriating local circumstances to me and my works: a deficiency in this respect has caused To the next month I looked for- much vexation and trouble in reward with greater anxiety than the gard to those authors who have left last; and having cautioned Demy no key behind them. I am conover and over again" to remember vinced, that the curiosity of the not to forget" to order the number public will be great after my death, of the Magazine for me, I resorted to learn every circumstance of my in the mean time to my studies, life, and I should justly deem mylest the public (of whom I thought self culpable of a proper want of quite as much as of myself) should deference to the future public, did be again disappointed of some pro- I not attempt to satisfy it by every duction of my pen. I prepared means in my power: after my dethree effusions ready for publica- cease they will bestow, most assution: these were, "The Female Sup-redly, that tribute to my memory, pliant," in the measure of "Pity which during my life they have dethe sorrows of a poor old man;"nied. For the purpose of doing "The cruel Lover," in that of Monk Lewis's "Alonzo and Imogene," and the last an epigram. every thing which my fame demands, I am now sitting to an eminent artist for my portrait, with a I had tried my hand at a sonnet, pensive air, a book in my hand, and but whether my genius disdained my study in the distance. I shall to be cramped in fourteen lines, or hand you, Mr. Editor, such letters whether the gods, or rather the as you may deem worthy a fac-sigoddesses, were, or were not, un-mile, and a view of the house, perpropitious, I was obliged at length haps the very room, in which I was reluctantly to abandon it. "Try born, delineated by my own pencil. it some other way," said Mr. Randal; "put the lines into other order." I did, but still I found they would not do though I was aware that Milton preferred his Paradise Regained to his Paradise Lost, and I might err in my decision; yet, fearful of tarnishing my blushing honours, I threw the unhappy composition into the fire-but not without taking care to preserve a clean copy for some future day. My works I expect will not form more than twenty-one volumes royal octavo, which, as I do not desire to retain the copy-right of them, nor will you perhaps be compelled to send copies to the universities (thanks to the interference of parliament), will no doubt afford abundant profit to some distant Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown. I may, however, leave them for the benefit of the Literary |