“Addressing you at last in propriâ persona on a subject, to which I have so often before called your attention, under the nom de guerre, or rather de mer, of Philo-Nauticus, I really do not well know what terms of apology to use in reference to my multiplied trespasses, or of acknowledgment, when I consider the truly liberal feeling evinced by you on the occasion. But would I not wrong that generous feeling by attempting excuses for making you a party to an act of humanity towards unfriended talent, or even thanking you for your ready co-operation? And is it not better at once to turn over to you the original cause of all, Fitzadam himself, who, Bellerophon-like perhaps, is the bearer of this. On him, therefore, let fall your ‘horrible pleasure.’ I have delayed for several days past in the hope of finding a leisure hour to accompany him; but my avocations and studies are so pressing on the one hand, and my impatience that he should be known to you so great on the other, that I have adopted the plan of writing with him
* The doctor’s compliment must have been paid either in one of his dogmatic moods, or from a desire to conciliate the good offices of the trade for the future. It could not be from feelings of gratitude for the patronage bestowed by the booksellers upon himself: for the publishers, at that time, were nearly all vulgar turn-pennies, ignorant of the nature of the goods in which they dealt, and not half so skilful in their way as butchers, who are knowing patrons of sheep and oxen, or poulterers, who are the patrons of turkeys, geese, and fowls—educated at cattle shows, and by their own gustativeness! A much superior order now prevails; though difficult enough to deal with. |
| 42 | AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. |
Perhaps in other and more active hands we might help him to fight his ‘battle over again,’ in a new edition, and this recommending him to the notice of the Admiralty and the public at large, succeed in rescuing him from that state of precarious dependence, so galling to the spirit, and so fatal to the efforts of genius.
