Rejected Addresses | Page 8

well, vastly well, for beginners; but they will never do-- never.
They would not pay for advertising, and without it I should not sell
fifty copies."
This was discouraging enough. If the most experienced publishers
feared to be out of pocket by the work, it was manifest, a fortiori, that
its writers ran a risk of being still more heavy losers, should they
undertake the publication on their own account. We had no objection to
raise a laugh at the expense of others; but to do it at our own cost,
uncertain as we were to what extent we might be involved, had never
entered into our contemplation. In this dilemma, our Addresses, now in
every sense rejected, might probably have never seen the light, had not
some good angel whispered us to betake ourselves to Mr. John Miller, a

dramatic publisher, then residing in Bow Street, Covent Garden. No
sooner had this gentleman looked over our manuscript, than he
immediately offered to take upon himself all the risk of publication,
and to give us half the profits, SHOULD THERE BE ANY; a liberal
proposition, with which we gladly closed. So rapid and decided was its
success, at which none were more unfeignedly astonished than its
authors, that Mr. Miller advised us to collect some Imitations of Horace,
which had appeared anonymously in the Monthly Mirror, {5} offering
to publish them upon the same terms. We did so accordingly; and as
new editions of the Rejected Addresses were called for in quick
succession, we were shortly enabled to sell our half copyright in the
two works to Mr. Miller for one thousand pounds! We have entered
into this unimportant detail, not to gratify any vanity of our own, but to
encourage such literary beginners as may be placed in similar
circumstances; as well as to impress upon publishers the propriety of
giving more consideration to the possible merit of the works submitted
to them, than to the mere magic of a name.
To the credit of the genus irritabile be it recorded, that not one of those
whom we had parodied or burlesqued ever betrayed the least soreness
on the occasion, or refused to join in the laugh that we had occasioned.
With most of them we subsequently formed acquaintanceship; while
some honoured us with an intimacy which still continues, where it has
not been severed by the rude hand of Death. Alas! it is painful to reflect,
that of the twelve writers whom we presumed to imitate, five are now
no more; the list of the deceased being unhappily swelled by the most
illustrious of all, the clarum et venerabile nomen of Sir Walter Scott!
From that distinguished writer, whose transcendent talents were only to
be equalled by his virtues and his amiability, we received favours and
notice, both public and private, which it will be difficult to forget,
because we had not the smallest claim upon his kindness. "I certainly
must have written this myself!" said that fine-tempered man to one of
the authors, pointing to the description of the Fire, "although I forget
upon what occasion." Lydia White, {6} a literary lady who was prone
to feed the lions of the day, invited one of us to dinner; but, recollecting
afterwards that William Spencer {7} formed one of the party, wrote to
the latter to put him off, telling him that a man was to be at her table
whom he "would not like to meet." "Pray, who is this whom I should

not like to meet?" inquired the poet. "O!" answered the lady, "one of
those men who have made that shameful attack upon you!" "The very
man upon earth I should like to know!" rejoined the lively and careless
bard. The two individuals accordingly met, and have continued fast
friends ever since. Lord Byron, too, wrote thus to Mr. Murray from
Italy--"Tell him I forgive him, were he twenty times over our satirist."
It may not be amiss to notice, in this place, one criticism of a
Leicestershire clergyman, which may be pronounced unique: "I do not
see why they should have been rejected," observed the matter-of-fact
annotator; "I think some of them very good!" Upon the whole, few
have been the instances, in the acrimonious history of literature, where
a malicious pleasantry like the Rejected Addresses--which the parties
ridiculed might well consider more annoying than a direct
satire--instead of being met by querulous bitterness or petulant
retaliation, has procured for its authors the acquaintance, or conciliated
the good-will, of those whom they had the most audaciously
burlesqued.
In commenting on a work, however trifling, which has survived the
lapse of twenty years, an author may almost claim the privileged
garrulity of age; yet even in a professedly gossiping Preface, we begin
to fear that we are