Rejected Addresses | Page 8

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 exceeding our commission, and abusing the patience of the reader. If we are doing so, we might urge extenuating circumstances, which will explain, though they may not excuse, our diffuseness. To one of us the totally unexpected success of this little work proved an important event, since it mainly decided him, some years afterwards, to embark in the literary career which the continued favour of that novel-reading world has rendered both pleasant and profitable to him. This is the first, as it will probably be the last, occasion upon which we shall ever intrude ourselves personally on the public notice; and we trust that our now doing so will stand excused by the reasons we have adduced.
LONDON, March, 1833

REJECTED