The Fortunes of Nigel | Page 5

_"Quam bonum et quam jucundum!"_ We may
indeed esteem ourselves as come of the same family, or, according to
our country proverb, as being all one man's bairns; and there needed no
apology on your part, reverend and dear sir, for demanding of me any
information which I may be able to supply respecting the subject of
your curiosity. The interview which you allude to took place in the
course of last winter, and is so deeply imprinted on my recollection,
that it requires no effort to collect all its most minute details.
You are aware that the share which I had in introducing the Romance,
called THE MONASTERY, to public notice, has given me a sort of
character in the literature of our Scottish metropolis. I no longer stand
in the outer shop of our bibliopolists, bargaining for the objects of my
curiosity with an unrespective shop-lad, hustled among boys who come
to buy Corderies and copy-books, and servant girls cheapening a
pennyworth of paper, but am cordially welcomed by the bibliopolist

himself, with, "Pray, walk into the back-shop, Captain. Boy, get a chair
for Captain Clutterbuck. There is the newspaper, Captain--to-day's
paper;" or, "Here is the last new work--there is a folder, make free with
the leaves;" or, "Put it in your pocket and carry it home;" or, "We will
make a bookseller of you, sir, and you shall have it at trade price." Or,
perhaps if it is the worthy trader's own publication, his liberality may
even extend itself to-- "Never mind booking such a trifle to _you_,
sir--it is an over-copy. Pray, mention the work to your reading friends."
I say nothing of the snug well-selected literary party arranged round a
turbot, leg of five-year-old mutton, or some such gear, or of the
circulation of a quiet bottle of Robert Cockburn's choicest black--nay,
perhaps, of his new ones. All these are comforts reserved to such as are
freemen of the corporation of letters, and I have the advantage of
enjoying them in perfection. But all things change under the sun; and it
is with no ordinary feelings of regret, that, in my annual visits to the
metropolis, I now miss the social and warm-hearted welcome of the
quick-witted and kindly friend who first introduced me to the public;
who had more original wit than would have set up a dozen of professed
sayers of good things, and more racy humour than would have made
the fortune of as many more. To this great deprivation has been added,
I trust for a time only, the loss of another bibliopolical friend, whose
vigorous intellect, and liberal ideas, have not only rendered his native
country the mart of her own literature, but established there a Court of
Letters, which must command respect, even from those most inclined
to dissent from many of its canons. The effect of these changes,
operated in a great measure by the strong sense and sagacious
calculations of an individual, who knew how to avail himself, to an
unhoped-for extent, of the various kinds of talent which his country
produced, will probably appear more clearly to the generation which
shall follow the present.
I entered the shop at the Cross, to enquire after the health of my worthy
friend, and learned with satisfaction, that his residence in the south had
abated the rigour of the symptoms of his disorder. Availing myself,
then, of the privileges to which I have alluded, I strolled onward in that
labyrinth of small dark rooms, or _crypts_, to speak our own
antiquarian language, which form the extensive back- settlements of
that celebrated publishing-house. Yet, as I proceeded from one obscure

recess to another, filled, some of them with old volumes, some with
such as, from the equality of their rank on the shelves, I suspected to be
the less saleable modern books of the concern, I could not help feeling
a holy horror creep upon me, when I thought of the risk of intruding on
some ecstatic bard giving vent to his poetical fury; or it might be, on
the yet more formidable privacy of a band of critics, in the act of
worrying the game which they had just run down. In such a supposed
case, I felt by anticipation the horrors of the Highland seers, whom
their gift of deuteroscopy compels to witness things unmeet for mortal
eye; and who, to use the expression of Collins,
----"heartless, oft, like moody madness, stare, To see the phantom train
their secret work prepare."
Still, however, the irresistible impulse of an undefined curiosity drove
me on through this succession of darksome chambers, till, like the
jeweller of Delhi in the house of the magician Bennaskar, I at length
reached a vaulted room, dedicated to secrecy and silence, and beheld,
seated by a lamp,