John Smith, a famous traveller, and by far the most enterprising of the first settlers in Virginia. How much he was indebted to the interesting young Pocahontas, daughter of King Powhatan, may be seen in all the histories of this colony. In the Dedication of his own work to the Duchess of Richmond, he thus enumerates his bonnes fortunes:- Yet my comfort is, that heretofore honourable and vertuous Ladies, and comparable but among themselves, have offered me rescue and protection in my greatest dangers. Even in forraine parts I have felt reliefe from that sex. The beauteous Lady Tra igzanda, when I was a slave to the Turks, did all she could to secure me. When I overcame the Ba.haw of Nalbrits in Tartaria, the charitable Lady Callamata supplyed my necessities. In the ut When your lip with a whisper came close to my cheek, most of my extremities, that blessed Pokahantas, the great King's And, plain as the eye of a Venus could speak, DAVIS, in his whimsical Travels through America, has manufactured into a kind of romance the loves of Mr Rolfe with this « opaci maxima mundi, Pocahontas. For the Sonnet, see page 94. 3 The American stages are the true political carriage.-BRISSOT's Travels, letter 6th.-There is nothing more amusing than the philosophical singeries of these French travellers. In one of the letters of Clavière, pr fixed to those of Brissot, upon their plan for establishing a republic of philosophers in some part of the western world, he intreats Brissot to be particular in chusing a place where there are no musquitoes: forsooth, ne quid respublica detrimenti caperet! Your eye seem'd to say-you would let me ! Then forgive the transgression, and bid me remain, Among the West-Indian French at Norfolk, there are some very interesting St Domingo girls, who, in the day, sell millinery, etc., and at night assemble in little cotillon parties, where they dance away the remembrance of their unfortunate country, and forget the miseries which les amis des noirs have brought upon them. Intercepted Letters; or, the Twopenny Post Bag. DEDICATION. Elapse manibus cecidere tabellæ.-OVID. To ST-N W--LR--E, ESQ. It is now about seven years since I promised (and I grieve to think it is almost as long since we met) to dedicate to you the very first book, of whatever size or kind, I should publish. Who could have thought that so many years would elapse without my giving the least signs of life upon the subject of this important promise? Who could have imagined that a volume of doggerel, after all, would be the first offering that Gratitude would lay upon the shrine of Friendship? my If, however, you are as interested about me and pursuits as formerly, you will be happy to hear that doggerel is not my only occupation; but that I am preparing to throw my name to the Swans of the Temple of Immortality, leaving it, of course, to the said Swans to determine whether they ever will take the trouble of picking it from the stream. In the mean time, my dear W--g, like a pious Lutheran, you must judge of me rather by my faith than my works, and, however trifling the tribute which I offer, never doubt the fidelity with which I am, and always shall be, Your sincere and attached friend, 245, Piccadilly, March 4, 1813. PREFACE. THE Bag, from which the following Letters are selected, was dropped by a Twopenny Postman about two months since, and picked up by an emissary of the Society for the S-pp-ss-n of V-e, who, supposing it might materially assist the private researches of that institution, immediately took it to his employers, and was rewarded handsomely for his trouble. Such a treasury of secrets was worth a whole host of informers; and, accordingly, like the Cupids of the poet (if I may use so profane a simile), who « fell at odds about the sweet-bag of a bec,» those venerable suppressors almost fought with each other for the honour and delight of first ransacking the Post-bag. Unluckily, however, it turned out, upon examination, that the discoveries of profligacy, which it enabled them to make, lay chiefly in those upper regions of society, which their well-bred regulations forbid them to molest or meddle with. In consequence, they gained but very few victims by their prize, and, after lying for a week or two under Mr H-TCH-D's counter, the Bag, with its violated contents, was sold for a trifle to a friend of mine. It happened that I had just then been seized with an ambition (having never tried the strength of my wing but in a newspaper) to publish something or other in the shape of a book; and it occurred to me that, the present being such a letter-writing era, a few of these two-penny post epistles, turned into easy verse, would be as light and popular a task as I could possibly I did not think it pruselect for a commencement. dent, however, to give too many letters at first, and, accordingly, have been obliged (in order to eke out a sufficient number of pages) to reprint some of those trifles, which had already appeared in the public journals. As, in the battles of ancient times, the shades of the departed were sometimes seen among the combatants, so I thought I might remedy the thinness of my ranks, by conjuring up a few dead and forgotten ephemerons to fill them. Such are the motives and accidents that led to the present publication; and as this is the first time my muse has ever ventured out of the go-cart of a newspaper, though I feel all a parent's delight at seeing little Miss go alone, I am also not without a parent's anxiety, lest an unlucky fall should be the consequence of the experiment; and I need not point out the many living instances there are of Muses that have suffered severely in their heads, from taking too early and rashly to their feet. Besides, a book is so very different a thing from a newspaper!-in the former, your doggerel, without either company or shelter, must stand shivering in the middle of a bleak white page by itself; whereas in the latter, it is comfortably backed by advertisements, and has sometimes even a speech of Mr St-ph-n's, or something equally warm, for a chauffe-pié,— -so that, in general, the very reverse of « laudatur et alget» is its destiny. Ambition, however, must run some risks, and I shall be very well satisfied if the reception of these few Letters should have the effect of sending me to the PostBag for more. PREFACE TO THE FOURTEENTH EDITION. BY A FRIEND OF THE AUTHOR. In the absence of Mr Brown, who is at present on a tour through I feel myself called upon, as his friend, to notice certain misconceptions and misrepresentations, to which this little volume of Trifles has given rise. In the first place, it is not true that Mr Brown has had any accomplices in the work. A note, indeed, which has hitherto accompanied his Preface, may very naturally have been the origin of such a supposition; but that note, which was merely the coquetry of an author, I have, in the present edition, taken upon myself to remove, and Mr Brown must therefore be considered (like the mother of that unique production, the Centaur, pova na povo) as alone responsible for the whole contents of the volume. 'Pindar. Pyth. 2.—My friend certainly cannot add OUT' ev ayδρασι γερασφόρον. him. In the next place it has been said, that in consequence of this graceless little book, a certain distinguished Personage prevailed upon another distinguished Personage to withdraw from the author that notice and kindness, with which he had so long and so liberally honoured There is not one syllable of truth in this story. For the magnanimity of the former of these persons I would, indeed, in no case answer too rashly; but of the conduct of the latter towards my friend, I have a proud gratification in declaring, that it has never ceased to be such as he must remember with indelible gratitude;a gratitude the more cheerfully and warmly paid, from its not being a debt incurred solely on his own account, but for kindness shared with those nearest and dearest to him. INTERCEPTED LETTERS, ETC. LETTER I. FROM THE PR-NC-SS CH---E OF WS TO THE My dear Lady Bab, you'll be shock'd, I'm afraid, Lord Eld-n first heard-and as instantly pray'd he year, kicks! To the charge of being an Irishman, poor Mr BROWN pleads guilty; and I believe it must also be acknowledged that he comes of a Roman Catholic family: an avowal which, I am aware, is decisive of his utter reprobation in It is still but too true you 're a Papist, my dear) the eyes of those exclusive patentees of Christianity, so Had insidiously sent, by a tall Irish groom, worthy to have been the followers of a certain enlight- Two priest-ridden ponies, just landed from Rome, ened Bishop, DONATUS,' who held « that God is in Africa,! And so full, little rogues, of pontifical tricks, and not elsewhere.» But from all this it does not ne-, That the dome of St Paul's was scarce safe from their cessarily follow that Mr BROWN is a Papist; and, indeed, I have the strongest reason for suspecting that they who say so are totally mistaken. Not that I presume to have ascertained his opinions upon such subjects; all I know of his orthodoxy is, that he has a Protestant wife and two or three little Protestant children, and that he has been seen at church every Sunday, for a whole year together, listening to the sermons of his truly reverend and amiable friend, Dr ———, and behaving there as well and as orderly as most people. There are a few more mistakes and falsehoods about Mr BROWN, to which I had intended, with all becoming gravity, to advert; but I begin to think the task is altogether as useless as it is tiresome. Calumnies and misrepresentations of this sort are, like the arguments and statements of Dr Duigenan, not at all the less vivacious, or less serviceable to their fabricators for having been refuted and disproved a thousand times over: they are brought forward again, as good as new, whenever malice or stupidity is in want of them, and are as useful as the old broken lantern, in Fielding's Amelia, which the watchman always keeps ready by him, to produce, in proof of riot, against his victims. I shall therefore give up the fruitless toil of vindication, and would even draw my pen over what I have already written, had I not promised to furnish the Publisher with a Preface, and know not how else I could contrive to eke it out. I have added two or three more trifles to this edition, which I found in the Morning Chronicle, and knew to be from the pen of my friend,2 The rest of the volume remains in its original state. April 20, 1814. 1 Bishop of Casa Nigræ, in the fourth century. The TRIFLES here alluded to, and others, which have since appeared, will be found in this edition.-Publisher. A new reading has been suggested in the original of the Ode of Horace, freely translated by Lord EiD-N. In the line Sive per Syrteis iter astuosas, it is proposed, by a very trifling alteration to read. Surtees instead of « Syrteis, which brings the Ode, it is said, more home to the noble Translator, and gives a peculiar force and aptness to the epithet æstuosas. I merely throw out this emendation for the learned, being unable myself to decide upon its merits. Off at once to papa, in a flurry, he flies- Quick a council is call'd-the whole cabinet sits- The Doctor, and he, the devout man of Leather, Lord H-rr-by, hoping that no one imputes «If the Pr-nc-ss will keep them (says Lord C-stl-r-gh), This young Lady, who is a Roman Catholic, has lately made a present of some beautiful ponies to the Pr-nc-ss. Before I send this scrawl away, I seize a moment, just to say There's some parts of the Turkish system For instance, in Seraglio matters- Where Love and Age went hand in hand;1 The learned Colonel must allude here to a description of the Mysterious Isle, in the History of Abdalla, Son of Hanif, where such inversions of the order of nature are said to have taken place. A score of old women, and the same number of old men, played here and there in the court, some at chuck-farthing, others at tip-cat or at cockles. And again, There is nothing, believe me, more engaging than those lovely wrinkles, etc. etc.-See Tales of the East, vol. iii, pp. 6ა7, 68. |