Rejected Addresses | Page 7

we now claim to be ranked among the most ardent admirers of this true poet; and if he himself could see the state of his works, which are ever at our right hand, he would, perhaps, receive the manifest evidences they exhibit of constant reference and delighted re- perusal, as some sort of amende honorable for the unfairness of which we were guilty when we were less conversant with the higher inspirations of his muse. To Mr. Coleridge, and others of our originals, we must also do a tardy act of justice, by declaring that our burlesque of their peculiarities has never blinded us to those beauties and talents which are beyond the reach of all ridicule.
One of us {3} had written a genuine Address for the occasion, which was sent to the Committee, and shared the fate it merited, in being rejected. To swell the bulk, or rather to diminish the tenuity of our little work, we added it to the Imitations; and prefixing the initials of S. T. P. for the purpose of puzzling the critics, were not a little amused, in the sequel, by the many guesses and conjectures into which we had ensnared some of our readers. We could even enjoy the mysticism, qualified as it was by the poor compliment, that our carefully written Address exhibited no "very prominent trait of absurdity," when we saw it thus noticed in the Edinburgh Review for November 1812:- "An Address by S. T. P. we can make nothing of; and professing our ignorance of the author designated by these letters, we can only add, that the Address, though a little affected, and not very full of meaning, has no very prominent trait of absurdity, that we can detect; and might have been adopted and spoken, so far as we can perceive, without any hazard of ridicule. In our simplicity we consider it as a very decent, mellifluous, occasional prologue; and do not understand how it has found its way into its present company."
Urged forward by hurry, and trusting to chance, two very bad coadjutors in any enterprise, we at length congratulated ourselves on having completed our task in time to have it printed and published by the opening of the theatre. But alas! our difficulties, so far from being surmounted, seemed only to be beginning. Strangers to the arcana of the booksellers' trade, and unacquainted with their almost invincible objection to single volumes of low price, especially when tendered by writers who have acquired no previous name, we little anticipated that they would refuse to publish our Rejected Addresses, even although we asked nothing for the copyright. Such, however, proved to be the case. Our manuscript was perused and returned to us by several of the most eminent publishers. {4} Well do we remember betaking ourselves to one of the craft in Bond-street, whom we found in a back parlour, with his gouty leg propped upon a cushion, in spite of which warning he diluted his luncheon with frequent glasses of Madeira. "What have you already written?" was his first question- -an interrogatory to which we had been subjected in almost every instance. "Nothing by which we can be known." "Then I am afraid to undertake the publication." We presumed timidly to suggest that every writer must have a beginning, and that to refuse to publish for him until he had acquired a name, was to imitate the sapient mother who cautioned her son against going into the water until he could swim. "An old joke--a regular Joe!" exclaimed our companion, tossing off another bumper. "Still older than Joe Miller," was our reply; "for, if we mistake not, it is the very first anecdote in the facetiae of Hierocles." "Ha, sirs!" resumed the bibliopolist, "you are learned, are you? So, sob!--Well, leave your manuscript with me; I will look it over to-night, and give you an answer to-morrow." Punctual as the clock we presented ourselves at his door on the following morning, when our papers were returned to us with the observation--"These trifles are really not deficient in smartness; they are 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,