Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I | Page 2

sun-dial is still supported by the negro; the grass has not lost its verdure, and on August evenings the plane-trees' leaves glint golden in the sun. One may still hear the chimes at midnight as Falstaff and Justice Shallow heard them of old. Here, where only a muffled murmur comes from the work-a-day world, a man in the last century might have dreamed away his life, lonely as Peter Wilkins on the island. One can imagine the amiable recluse composing his homely romance amid such surroundings. Perhaps it was the one labour of his life. He may have come to the Inn originally with the aspiration of making fame and money; and then the spirit of cloistered calm turned him from such vulgar paths, and instead of losing his fine feelings and swelling the ranks of the plutocrats, he gave us a charming romance for our fireside. With the literary men of his day he seems to have had no intercourse. Not a single mention of him is to be found among his contemporaries, and we may be sure that he cut no brilliant figure at the club-houses. No chorus of reviewers chimed the praises of "Peter Wilkins." So far as I can discover, the "Monthly Review" was the only journal in which the book was noticed, and such criticism as the following can hardly be termed laudatory:--"Here is a very strange performance indeed. It seems to be the illegitimate offspring of no very natural conjunction, like 'Gulliver's Travels' and 'Robinson Crusoe;' but much inferior to the manner of these two performances as to entertainment or utility. It has all that is impossible in the one or impossible in the other, without the wit and spirit of the first, or the just strokes of nature and useful lessons of morality in the second. However, if the invention of wings for mankind to fly with is sufficient amends for all the dulness and unmeaning extravagance of the author, we are willing to allow that his book has some merit, and that he deserves some encouragement at least as an able mechanic, if not as a good author." But the book was not forgotten. A new edition appeared in 1783, and again in the following year. It was included in Weber's "Popular Romances," 1812, and published separately, with some charming plates by Stothard, in 1816. Within the last fifty years it has been frequently issued, entire or mutilated, in a popular form. A drama founded on the romance was acted at Covent Garden on April 16, 1827; and more than once of late years "Peter Wilkins" has afforded material for pantomimes. In 1763 a French translation (by Philippe Florent de Puisieux) appeared under the title of "Les Hommes Volants, ou les Aventures de Pierre Wilkins," which was included in vols. xxii.-xxiii. of DePerthe's "Voyages Imaginaires" ( 1788-89). A German translation was published in 1767, having for title "Die fliegenden Menschen, oder wunderbare Begebenheiten Peter Wilkins." Whether the author lived to see the translations of this work cannot be ascertained. A Robert Paltock was buried at Ryme Intrinseca Church, Dorset, in 1767, aged seventy (Hutchin's "Dorset," iv. 493-494, third edition), but it is very doubtful whether he was the author of the romance.
Paltock's fame may be said to be firmly established. An American writer, it is true, in a recent "History of Fiction," says not a word about "Peter Wilkins;" but, we must remember, another American wrote a "History of Caricature" without mentioning Rowlandson. Coleridge admired the book, and is reported to have said: "Peter Wilkins is, to my mind, a work of uncommon beauty.... I believe that 'Robinson Crusoe' and 'Peter Wilkins' could only have been written by islanders. No continentalist could have conceived either tale.... It would require a very peculiar genius to add another tale ejusdem generis to 'Robinson Crusoe' and 'Peter Wilkins.' I once projected such a thing, but the difficulty of the preoccupied ground stopped me. Perhaps La Motte Fouqu�� might effect something; but I should fear that neither he nor any other German could entirely understand what may be called the desert island feeling. I would try the marvellous line of 'Peter Wilkins' if I attempted it rather than the real fiction of 'Robinson Crusoe'" ("Table-Talk," 1851, pp. 331-332). Southey, in a note on a passage of the "Curse of Kehama," went so far as to say that Paltock's winged people "are the most beautiful creatures of imagination that ever were devised," and added that Sir Walter Scott was a warm admirer of the book. With Charles Lamb at Christ's Hospital the story was a favourite. "We had classics of our own," he says, "without being beholden to 'insolent Greece or haughty Rome,' that passed current among us--'Peter Wilkins,' the 'Adventures of the Hon. Captain Robert Boyle,'