NO. XX.—MONDAY, JANUARY 25, 1808.

FROM MY ELBOW-CHAIR.

“Extremum hunc mihi concede laborem.”—Virg.

“Soft you, a word or two before we part.”

In this season of festivity, when the gate of time swings open on its hinges, and an honest rosy-faced New Year comes waddling in, like a jolly fat-sided alderman, loaded with good wishes, good humor, and minced pies,—at this joyous era it has been the custom, from time immemorial, in this ancient and respectable city, for periodical writers, from reverend, grave, and potent essayists like ourselves, down to the humble but industrious editors of magazines, reviews, and newspapers, to tender their subscribers the compliments of the season; and when they have slily thawed their hearts with a little of the sunshine of flattery, to conclude by delicately dunning them for their arrears of subscription money. In like manner the carriers of newspapers, who undoubtedly belong to the ancient and honorable order of literati, do regularly at the commencement of the year, salute their patrons with abundance of excellent advice, conveyed in exceedingly good poetry, for which the aforesaid 449good-natured patrons are well pleased to pay them exactly twenty-five cents. In walking the streets I am every day saluted with good wishes from old gray-headed negroes, whom I never recollect to have seen before; and it was but a few days ago, that I was called to receive the compliments of an ugly old woman, who last spring was employed by Mrs. Cockloft to whitewash my room and put things in order; a phrase which, if rightly understood, means little else than huddling everything into holes and corners, so that if I want to find any particular article, it is, in the language of a humble but expressive saying—“looking for a needle in a haystack.” Not recognizing my visitor, I demanded by what authority she wished me a “Happy New Year!” Her claim was one of the weakest she could have urged, for I have an innate and mortal antipathy to this custom of putting things to rights; so giving the old witch a pistareen, I desired her forthwith to mount her broomstick, and ride off as fast as possible.

Of all the various ranks of society, the bakers alone, to their immortal honor be it recorded, depart from this practice of making a market of congratulations; and in addition to always allowing thirteen to the dozen, do with great liberality, instead of drawing on the purses of their customers at the New Year, present them with divers large, fair, spiced cakes; which, like the shield of Achilles, or an Egyptian obelisk, are adorned with figures of a variety of strange animals, that, 450in their conformation, out-marvel all the wild wonders of nature.

This honest gray-beard custom of setting apart a certain portion of this good-for-nothing existence for the purposes of cordiality, social merriment, and good cheer, is one of the inestimable relics handed down to us from our worthy Dutch ancestors. In perusing one of the manuscripts from my worthy grandfather’s mahogany chest of drawers, I find the New Year was celebrated with great festivity during that golden age of our city, when the reins of government were held by the renowned Rip Van Dam, who always did honor to the season by seeing out the old year; a ceremony which consisted in plying his guests with bumpers, until not one of them was capable of seeing. “Truly,” observes my grandfather, who was generally of these parties,—“Truly, he was a most stately and magnificent burgomaster! inasmuch, as he did right lustily carouse it with his friends about New Year; roasting huge quantities of turkeys; baking innumerable minced pies; and smacking the lips of all fair ladies the which he did meet, with such sturdy emphasis that the same might have been heard the distance of a stone’s throw.” In his days, according to my grandfather, first were invented these notable cakes, hight new-year-cookies, which originally were impressed on one side with the honest burly countenance of the illustrious Rip; and on the other with that of the noted St. Nicholas, vulgarly called Santa Claus, of all the saints of the calendar the most venerated by true Hollanders and 451their unsophisticated descendants. These cakes are to this time given on the first of January to all visitors, together with a glass of cherry-bounce, or raspberry-brandy. It is with great regret, however, I observe that the simplicity of this venerable usage has been much violated by modern pretenders to style, and our respectable new-year-cookies and cherry-bounce elbowed aside by plum-cake and outlandish liqueurs, in the same way that our worthy old Dutch families are out-dazzled by modern upstarts and mushroom cockneys.

In addition to this divine origin of New Year festivity, there is something exquisitely grateful, to a good-natured mind, in seeing every face dressed in smiles; in hearing the oft-repeated salutations that flow spontaneously from the heart to the lips; in beholding the poor, for once, enjoying the smiles of plenty, and forgetting the cares which press hard upon them, in the jovial revelry of the feelings; the young children, decked out in their Sunday clothes, and freed from their only cares, the cares of the school, tripping through the streets on errands of pleasure; and even the very negroes, those holiday-loving rogues, gorgeously arrayed in cast-off finery, collected in juntos, at corners, displaying their white teeth, and making the welkin ring with bursts of laughter loud enough to crack even the icy cheek of old winter. There is something so pleasant in all this, that I confess it would give me real pain, to behold the frigid influence of modern style cheating us of this jubilee of the heart; and converting 452it, as it does every other article of social intercourse, into an idle and unmeaning ceremony. ’Tis the annual festival of good humor; it comes in the dead of winter, when nature is without a charm, when our pleasures are contracted to the fireside, and when everything that unlocks the icy fetters of the heart, and sets the genial current flowing, should be cherished, as a stray lamb found in the wilderness; or a flower blooming among thorns and briers.

Animated by these sentiments, it is with peculiar satisfaction I perceived that the last New Year was kept with more than ordinary enthusiasm. It seemed as if the good old times had rolled back again, and brought with them all the honest, unceremonious intercourse of those golden days, when people were more open and sincere, more moral and more hospitable than now; when every object carried about it a charm which the hand of time has stolen away, or turned to a deformity; when the women were more simple, more domestic, more lovely, and more true; and when even the sun, like a hearty old blade as he is, shone with a genial lustre unknown in these degenerate days,—in short, those fairy times when I was a madcap boy, crowding every enjoyment into the present moment; making of the past an oblivion; of the future a heaven; and careless of all that was “Over the hills and far away.” Only one thing was wanting to make every part of the celebration accord with its ancient simplicity. The ladies, who—I write it with the most piercing regret—are generally at the head of all 453domestic innovations, most fastidiously refused that mark of good-will, that chaste and holy salute which was so fashionable in the happy days of Governor Rip and the patriarchs. Even the Miss Cocklofts, who belong to a family that is the last intrenchment behind which the manners of the good old school have retired, made violent opposition; and whenever a gentleman entered the room, immediately put themselves in a posture of defense. This, Will Wizard, with his usual shrewdness, insists was only to give the visitor a hint that they expected an attack; and declares he has uniformly observed, that the resistance of those ladies, who make the greatest noise and bustle, is most easily overcome. This sad innovation originated with my good aunt Charity, who was as arrant a tabby as ever wore whiskers; and I am not a little afflicted to find that she has found so many followers, even among the young and beautiful.

In compliance with an ancient and venerable custom, sanctioned by time and our ancestors, and more especially by my own inclinations, I will take this opportunity to salute my readers with as many good wishes as I can possibly spare; for, in truth, I have been so prodigal of late, that I have but few remaining. I should have offered my congratulations sooner; but, to be candid, having made the last New Year’s campaign, according to custom, under Cousin Christopher, in which I have seen some pretty hard service, my head has been somewhat out of order of late, and my intellects rather cloudy for clear writing. Besides, 454I may allege as another reason, that I have deferred my greetings until this day, which is exactly one year since we introduced ourselves to the public; and surely periodical writers have the same right of dating from the commencement of their works, that monarchs have from the time of their coronation, or our most puissant republic from the declaration of its independence.

These good wishes are warmed into more than usual benevolence by the thought that I am now, perhaps, addressing my old friends for the last time. That we should thus cut off our work in the very vigor of its existence, may excite some little matter of wonder in this enlightened community. Now, though we could give a variety of good reasons for so doing, yet it would be an ill-natured act to deprive the public of such an admirable opportunity to indulge in their favorite amusement of conjecture; so we generously leave them to flounder in the smooth ocean of glorious uncertainty. Besides, we have ever considered it as beneath persons of our dignity to account for our movements or caprices; thank heaven, we are not like the unhappy rulers of this enlightened land, accountable to the mob for our actions, or dependent on their smiles for support!—this much, however, we will say, it is not for want of subjects that we stop our career. We are not in the situation of poor Alexander the Great, who wept, as well indeed he might, because there were no more worlds to conquer; for, to do justice to this queer, odd, rantipole city, and to this whimsical country, there is matter enough in them 455to keep our risible muscles and our pens going till doomsday.

Most people, in taking a farewell which may, perhaps, be forever, are anxious to part on good terms; and it is usual, on such melancholy occasions, for even enemies to shake hands, forget their previous quarrels, and bury all former animosities in parting regrets. Now, because most people do this, I am determined to act in quite a different way; for, as I have lived, so I should wish to die, in my own way, without imitating any person, whatever may be his rank, talents, or reputation. Besides, if I know our trio, we have no enmities to obliterate, no hatchet to bury; and as to all injuries—those we have long since forgiven. At this moment there is not an individual in the world, not even the Pope himself, to whom we have any personal hostility. But if, shutting their eyes to the many striking proofs of good-nature displayed through the whole course of this work, there should be any persons so singularly ridiculous as to take offense at our strictures, we heartily forgive their stupidity; earnestly entreating them to desist from all manifestations of ill-humor, lest they should, peradventure, be classed under some one of the denominations of recreants, we have felt it our duty to hold up to public ridicule. Even at this moment, we feel a glow of parting philanthropy stealing upon us; a sentiment of cordial good-will toward the numerous host of readers that have jogged on at our heels during the last year; and in justice to ourselves must seriously protest, that if at any time we 456have treated them a little ungently, it was purely in that spirit of hearty affection, with which a schoolmaster drubs an unlucky urchin, or a humane muleteer his recreant animal, at the very moment when his heart is brimful of loving kindness. If this is not considered an ample justification, so much the worse; for in that case I fear we shall remain forever unjustified—a most desperate extremity, and worthy of every man’s commiseration!

One circumstance, in particular, has tickled us mightily as we jogged along; and that is, the astonishing secrecy with which we have been able to carry on our lucubrations! fully aware of the profound sagacity of the public of Gotham, and their wonderful faculty of distinguishing a writer by his style, it is with great self-congratulation we find that suspicion has never pointed to us as the authors of Salmagundi. Our gray-beard speculations have been most bountifully attributed to sundry smart young gentlemen, who, for aught we know, have no beards at all; and we have often been highly amused when they were charged with the sin of writing what their harmless minds never conceived, to see them affect all the blushing modesty and beautiful embarrassment of detected virgin authors. The profound and penetrating public, having so long been led away from truth and nature by a constant perusal of those delectable histories, and romances, from beyond seas, in which human nature is, for the most part, wickedly mangled and debauched, have never once imagined this work was a genuine and most 457authentic history; that the Cocklofts were a real family, dwelling in the city, paying scot and lot, entitled to the right of suffrage, and holding several respectable offices in the corporation. As little do they suspect that there is a knot of merry old bachelors seated snugly in the old-fashioned parlor of an old-fashioned Dutch house, with a weathercock on the top that came from Holland; who amuse themselves of an evening by laughing at their neighbors, in an honest way, and who manage to jog on through the streets of our ancient and venerable city, without elbowing or being elbowed by a living soul.

When we first adopted the idea of discontinuing this work, we determined, in order to give the critics a fair opportunity for dissection, to declare ourselves, one and all, absolutely defunct: for it is one of the rare and invaluable privileges of a periodical writer, that by an act of innocent suicide he may lawfully consign himself to the grave, and cheat the world of posthumous renown. But we abandoned this scheme for many substantial reasons, In the first place, we care but little for the opinion of critics, whom we consider a kind of freebooters in the republic of letters; who, like deer, goats, and divers other graminivorous animals, gain subsistence by gorging upon the buds and leaves of the young shrubs of the forest, thereby robbing them of their verdure, and retarding their progress to maturity. It also occurred to us, that though an author might lawfully, in all countries, kill himself outright, yet this privilege did not extend to 458the raising himself from the dead, if he was ever so anxious; and all that is left him in such a case, is to take the benefit of the metempsychosis act, and revive under a new name and form.

Far be it, therefore, from us to condemn ourselves to useless embarrassments, should we ever be disposed to resume the guardianship of this learned city of Gotham, and finish this invaluable work, which is yet but half completed. We hereby openly and seriously declare, that we are not dead, but intend, if it please Providence, to live for many years to come, to enjoy life with the genuine relish of honest souls, careless of riches, honors, and everything but a good name, among good fellows, and with the full expectation of shuffling off the remnant of existence after the excellent fashion of that merry Grecian, who died laughing.

TO THE LADIES.

BY ANTHONY EVERGREEN, GENT.

Next to our being a knot of independent old bachelors, there is nothing on which we pride ourselves more highly than upon possessing that true chivalric spirit of gallantry which distinguished the days of King Arthur and his valiant Knights of the Round Table. We cannot, therefore, leave the lists where we have so long been tilting at folly, with giving a farewell salutation 459to those noble dames and beauteous damsels who have honored us with their presence at the tourney. Like true knights, the only recompense we crave is the smile of beauty, and the approbation of those gentle fair ones, whose smile and whose approbation far excels all the trophies of honor, and all the rewards of successful ambition. True it is that we have suffered infinite perils, in standing forth as their champions, from the sly attacks of sundry arch caitiffs, who, in the overflowings of their malignity, have even accused us of entering the lists as defenders of the very foibles and faults of the sex. Would that we could meet with these recreants hand to hand; they should receive no more quarter than giants and enchanters in romance.

Had we a spark of vanity in our natures, here is a glorious occasion to show our skill in refuting these illiberal insinuations; but there is something manly and ingenuous in making an honest confession of one’s offenses when about retiring from the world; and so, without any more ado, we doff our helmets, and thus publicly plead guilty to the deadly sin of GOOD-NATURE; hoping and expecting forgiveness from our good-natured readers—yet careless whether they bestow it or not. And in this we do but imitate sundry condemned criminals, who, finding themselves convicted of a capital crime, with great openness and candor, do generally, in their last dying speech, make a confession of all their previous offenses, which confession is always read with great delight by all true lovers of biography.

460Still, however, notwithstanding our notorious devotion to the gentle sex, and our indulgent partiality, we have endeavored, on divers occasions, with all the polite and becoming delicacy of true respect, to reclaim them from many of those delusive follies and unseemly peccadilloes in which they are unhappily too prone to indulge. We have warned them against the sad consequences of encountering our midnight damps and withering wintry blasts; we have endeavored, with pious hands, to snatch them from the wildering mazes of the waltz, and thus rescuing them from the arms of strangers, to restore them to the bosoms of their friends; to preserve them from the nakedness, the famine, the cobweb muslins, the vinegar cruet, the corset, the stay-tape, the buckram, and all the other miseries and racks of a fine figure. But, above all, we have endeavored to lure them from the mazes of a dissipated world, where they wander about, careless of their value, until they lose their original worth; and to restore them, before it is too late, to the sacred asylum of home, the soil most congenial to the opening blossom of female loveliness, where it blooms and expands in safety, in the fostering sunshine of maternal affection, and where its heavenly sweets are best known and appreciated.

Modern philosophers may determine the proper destination of the sex; they may assign to them an extensive and brilliant orbit, in which to revolve, to the delight of the million and the confusion of man’s superior intellect; but when on this subject we disclaim philosophy, and appeal 461to the higher tribunal of the heart—and what heart that had not lost its better feelings, would ever seek to repose its happiness on the bosom of one whose pleasures all lay without the threshold of home—who snatched enjoyment only in the whirlpool of dissipation, and amid the thoughtless and evanescent gayety of a ball-room? The fair one who is forever in the career of amusement may for a while dazzle, astonish, and entertain; but we are content with coldly admiring, and fondly turn from glitter and noise, to seek the happy fireside of social life, there to confide our dearest and best affections.

Yet some there are—and we delight to mention them—who mingle freely with the world, unsullied by its contaminations; whose brilliant minds, like the stars of the firmament, are destined to shed their light abroad and gladden every beholder with their radiance—to withhold them from the world would be doing it injustice—they are inestimable gems, which were never formed to be shut up in caskets, but to be the pride and ornament of elegant society.

We have endeavored always to discriminate between a female of this superior order and the thoughtless votary of pleasure, who, destitute of intellectual resources, is servilely dependent on others for every little pittance of enjoyment; who exhibits herself incessantly amid the noise, the giddy frolic, and capricious vanity of fashionable assemblages; dissipating her languid affection on a crowd; lavishing her ready smiles with indiscriminate prodigality on the worthy or the undeserving; 462and listening with equal vacancy of mind to the conversation of the enlightened, the frivolity of the coxcomb, and the flourish of the fiddle-stick.

There is a certain artificial polish—a commonplace vivacity acquired by perpetually mingling in the beau monde, which, in the commerce of the world, supplies the place of natural suavity or good humor; but is purchased at the expense of all original and sterling traits of character. By a kind of fashionable discipline the eye is taught to brighten, the lip to smile, and the whole countenance to irradiate with the semblance of friendly welcome, while the bosom is unwarmed by a single spark of genuine kindness or good-will. The elegant simulation may be admired by the connoisseur of human character as a perfection of art, but the heart is not to be deceived by the superficial illusion; it turns with delight to the timid, retiring fair one, whose smile is the smile of nature; whose blush is the soft suffusion of delicate sensibility; and whose affections, unblighted by the chilling effects of dissipation, glow with all the tenderness and purity of artless youth. Hers is a singleness of mind, a native innocence of manners, and a sweet timidity that steal insensibly upon the heart, and lead it a willing captive; though venturing occasionally among the fairy haunts of pleasure, she shrinks from the broad glare of notoriety, and seems to seek refuge among her friends, even from the admiration of the world.

These observations bring to mind a little allegory 463in one of the manuscripts of the sage Mustapha, which, being in some measure applicable to the subject of this essay, we transcribe for the benefit of our fair readers.

Among the numerous race of the Bedouins, who people the vast tracts of Arabia Deserta, is a small tribe, remarkable for their habits of solitude and love of independence. They are of a rambling disposition, roving from waste to waste, slaking their thirst at such scanty pools as are found in those cheerless plains, and glory in the unenvied liberty they enjoy. A youthful Arab of this tribe, a simple son of nature, at length growing weary of his precarious and unsettled mode of life, determined to set out in search of some permanent abode. “I will seek,” said he, “some happy region, some generous clime, where the dews of heaven diffuse fertility; I will find out some unfailing stream, and, forsaking the joyless life of my forefathers, settle on its borders, dispose my mind to gentle pleasures and tranquil enjoyments, and never wander more.”

Enchanted with this picture of pastoral felicity, he departed from the tents of his companions; and having journeyed during five days, on the sixth, as the sun was just rising in all the splendors of the East, he lifted up his eyes and beheld extended before him, in smiling luxuriance, the fertile regions of Arabia the Happy. Gently swelling hills, tufted with blooming grove, swept down into luxuriant vales, enameled with flowers of never-withering beauty. The sun, no longer darting his rays with torrid fervor, beamed with 464a genial warmth that gladdened and enriched the landscape. A pure and temperate serenity, an air of voluptuous repose, a smile of contented abundance, pervaded the face of nature, and every zephyr breathed a thousand delicious odors. The soul of the youthful wanderer expanded with delight—he raised his eyes to heaven, and almost mingled with his tribute of gratitude, a sigh of regret that he had lingered so long amid the sterile solitudes of the desert.

With fond impatience he hastened to make choice of a stream where he might fix his habitation, and taste the promised sweets of this land of delight. But here commenced an unforeseen perplexity; for, though he beheld inumerable streams on every side, yet not one could he find which completely answered his high-raised expectations. One abounded with wild and picturesque beauty, but it was capricious and unsteady in its course; sometimes dashing its angry billows against the rocks, and often raging and overflowing its banks. Another flowed smoothly along, without even a ripple or a murmur; but its bottom was soft and muddy, and its current dull and sluggish. A third was pure and transparent, but its waters were of a chilling coldness, and it had rocks and flints in its bosom. A fourth was dulcet in its tinklings, and graceful in its meanderings; but it had a cloying sweetness that palled upon the taste; while a fifth possessed a sparkling vivacity, and a pungency of flavor, that deterred the wanderer from repeating his draught.

The youthful Bedouin began to weary with 465fruitless trials and repeated disappointments, when his attention was suddenly attracted by a lively brook whose dancing waves glittered in the sunbeams, and whose pratting current communicated an air of bewitching gayety to the surrounding landscape. The heart of the wayworn traveller beat with expectation; but on regarding it attentively on its course, he found that it constantly avoided the embowering shade, loitering with equal fondness, whether gliding through the rich valley, or over the barren sand; that the fragrant flower, the fruitful shrub, and the worthless bramble were alike fostered by its waves, and that its current was often interrupted by unprofitable weeds. With idle ambition it expanded itself beyond its proper bounds, and spread into a shallow waste of water, destitute of beauty or utility, and babbling along with uninteresting vivacity and vapid turbulence.

The wandering son of the desert turned away with a sigh of regret, and pitied a stream which, if content within its natural limits, might have been the pride of the valley, and the object of all his wishes. Pensive, musing, and disappointed, he slowly pursued his now almost hopeless pilgrimage, and had rambled for some time along the margin of a gentle rivulet, before he became sensible of its beauties. It was a simple pastoral stream, which, shunning the noonday glare, pursued its unobtrusive course through retired and tranquil vales; now dimpling among flowery banks and tufted shrubbery; now winding among spicy groves, whose aromatic foliage 466fondly bent down to meet the limpid wave. Sometimes, but not often, it would venture from its covert to stray through a flowery meadow; but quickly, as if fearful of being seen, stole back again into its more congenial shade, and there lingered with sweet delay. Wherever it bent its course, the face of nature brightened into smiles, and a perennial spring reigned upon its borders. The warblers of the woodland delighted to quit their recesses and carol among its bowers; while the turtle-dove, the timid fawn, the soft-eyed gazelle, and all the rural populace, who joy in the sequestered haunts of nature, resorted to its vicinity. Its pure transparent waters rolled over snow-white sands, and heaven itself was reflected in its tranquil bosom.

The simple Arab threw himself upon its verdant margin; he tasted the silver tide, and it was like nectar to his lips; he bounded with transport, for he had found the object of his wayfaring. “Here,” cried he, “will I pitch my tent: here will I pass my days; for pure, O fair stream, is thy gentle current; beauteous are thy borders; and the grove must be a paradise that is refreshed by thy meanderings!”

“Pendant opera interrupta.”—Virg.

“The work’s all aback.”—Link. Fid.

“How hard it is,” exclaims the divine Confutsé, better known among the illiterate by the name of Confucius, “for a man to bite off 467his own nose!” At this moment I, William Wizard, Esq., feel the full force of this remark, and cannot but give vent to my tribulation at being obliged, through the whim of friend Langstaff, to stop short in my literary career, when at the very point of astonishing my country, and reaping the brightest laurels of literature. We daily hear of shipwrecks, of failures and bankruptcies; they are trifling mishaps which, from their frequency, excite but little astonishment or sympathy; but it is not often that we hear of a man’s letting immortality slip through his fingers; and when he does meet with such a misfortune, who would deny him the comfort of bewailing his calamity?

Next to embargo, laid upon our commerce, the greatest public annoyance is the embargo laid upon our work; in consequence of which, the produce of my wits, like that of my country, must remain at home; and my ideas, like so many merchantmen in port, or redoubtable frigates in the Potomac, moulder away in the mud of my own brain. I know of few things in this world more annoying than to be interrupted in the middle of a favorite story, at the most interesting part, where one expects to shine or to have a conversation broken off just when you are about coming out, with a score of excellent jokes, not one of which but was good enough to make every fine figure in corsets literally split her sides with laughter. In some such predicament am I placed at present; and I do protest to you, my good-looking and well beloved readers, by the chop-sticks 468of the immortal Josh, I was on the very brink of treating you with a full broadside of the most ingenious and instructive essays that your precious noddles were ever bothered with.

In the first place, I had, with infinite labor and pains, and by consulting the divine Plato, Sanconiathon, Apollonius Rhodius, Sir John Harrington, Noah Webster, Linkum Fidelius, and others, fully refuted all those wild theories respecting the first settlement of our venerable country; and proved, beyond contradiction, that America, so far from being, as the writers of upstart Europe denominate it, the new world, is at least as old as any country in existence, not excepting Egypt, China, or even the land of the Assiniboins; which, according to the traditions of that ancient people, has already assisted at the funerals of thirteen suns, and four hundred and seventy thousand moons!

I had likewise written a long dissertation on certain hieroglyphics discovered on those fragments of the moon, which have lately fallen, with singular propriety, in a neighboring State, and have thrown considerable light on the state of literature and the arts in that planet, showing that the universal language which prevails there is high Dutch; thereby proving it to be the most ancient and original tongue, and corroborating the opinion of a celebrated poet, that it is the language in which the serpent tempted our grandmother Eve.

To support the theatric department, I had several very judicious critiques, ready written, wherein 469no quarter was shown either to authors or actors; and I was only waiting to determine at what plays or performances they should be leveled. As to the grand spectacle of Cinderella, which is to be represented this season, I had given it a most unmerciful handling, showing that it was neither tragedy, comedy, nor farce; that the incidents were highly improbable, that the prince played like a perfect harlequin, that the white mice were merely powdered for the occasion, and that the new moon had a most outrageous copper nose.

But my most profound and erudite essay in embryo is an analytical, hypercritical review of these Salmagundi lucubrations; which I had written partly in revenge for the many waggish jokes played off against me by my confederates, and partly for the purpose of saving much invaluable labor to the Zoiluses and Dennises of the age, by detecting and exposing all the similarities, resemblances, synonymies, analogies, coincidences, etc., which occur in this work.

I hold it downright plagiarism for any author to write, or even to think, in the same manner with any other writer that either did, doth, or may exist. It is a sage maxim of law—“Ignorantia neminem excusat”—and the same has been extended to literature: so that if an author shall publish an idea that has been ever hinted by another, it shall be no exculpation for him to plead ignorance of the fact. All, therefore, that I had to do was to take a good pair of spectacles, or a magnifiying glass, and with Salmagundi in hand and 470a tableful of books before me, to muse over them alternately, in a corner of Cockloft library: carefully comparing and contrasting all odd ends and fragments of sentences. Little did honest Launce suspect, when he sat lounging and scribbling in his elbow-chair with no other stock to draw upon than his own brain, and no other authority to consult than the sage Linkum Fidelius—little did he think that his careless, unstudied effusions would receive such scrupulous investigation.

By laborious researches, and patiently collating words, where sentences and ideas did not correspond, I have detected sundry sly disguises and metamorphoses of which, I’ll be bound, Langstaff himself is ignorant. Thus, for instance—the little man in black is evidently no less a personage than old Goody Blake or Goody something, filched from the Spectator, who confessedly filched her from Otway’s “wrinkled hag with age grown double.” My friend Launce has taken the honest old woman, dressed her up in the cast-off suit worn by Twaits, in Lampedo, and endeavored to palm the imposture upon the enlightened inhabitants of Gotham. No further proof of the fact need be given, than that Goody Blake was taken for a witch, and the little man in black for a conjurer; and that they both lived in villages, the inhabitants of which were distinguished by a most respectful abhorrence of hobgoblins and broomsticks; to be sure the astonishing similarity ends here, but surely that is enough to prove that the little man in black is no other than Goody Blake in the disguise of a white witch.

471Thus, also, the sage Mustapha, in mistaking a brag-party for a convention of magi studying hieroglyphics, may pretend to originality of idea and to a familiar acquaintance with the black-letter literati of the East. But this Tripolitan trick will not pass here; I refer those who wish to detect his larceny to one of those wholesale jumbles, or hodge-podge collections of science, which, like a tailor’s pandemonium or a giblet-pie, are receptacles for scientific fragments of all sorts and sizes. The reader, learned in dictionary studies, will at once perceive I mean an encyclopædia. There, under the title of Magi, Egypt, Cards, or Hieroglyphics, I forget which, will be discovered an idea similar to that of Mustapha, as snugly concealed as truth at the bottom of a well, or the mistletoe amid the shady branches of an oak; and it may at any time be drawn from its lurking-place, by those hewers of wood, and drawers of water, who labor in humbler walks of criticism. This is assuredly a most unpardonable error of the sage Mustapha, who had been the captain of a ketch; and, of course, as your nautical men are for the most part very learned, ought to have known better. But this is not the only blunder of the grave Mussulman who swears by the head of Amrou, the beard of Barbarossa, and the sword of Khalid, as glibly as our good Christian soldiers anathematize body and soul, or a sailor his eyes and odd limbs. Now I solemnly pledge myself to the world, that in all my travels through the East, in Persia, Arabia, China, and Egypt, I never heard man, woman, or child, utter any of those preposterous 472and newfangled asseverations; and that, so far from swearing by any man’s head, it is considered, throughout the East, the greatest insult that can be offered to either the living or dead to meddle in any shape even with his beard. These are but two or three specimens of the exposures I would have made; but I should have descended still lower; nor would have spared the most insignificant and, or but, or nevertheless, provided I could have found a ditto in the “Spectator” or the dictionary; but all these minutiæ I bequeath to the Lilliputian literati of this sagacious community, who are fond of hunting “such small deer,” and I earnestly pray they may find full employment for a twelvemonth to come.

But the most outrageous plagiarisms of friend Launcelot are those made on sundry living personages. Thus: Tom Straddle has been evidently stolen from a distinguished Brummagem emigrant, since they both ride on horseback; Dabble, the little great man, has his origin in a certain aspiring counselor, who is rising in the world as rapidly as the heaviness of his head will permit; mine uncle John will bear a tolerable comparison, particularly as it respects the sterling qualities of his heart, with a worthy yeoman of Westchester County; and to deck out Aunt Charity, and the amiable Miss Cocklofts, he has rifled the charms of half the ancient vestals in the city. Nay, he has taken unpardonable liberties with my own person!—elevating me on the substantial pedestals of a worthy gentleman from China, and tricking me out with claret coats, tight breeches, 473and silver-sprigged dickeys, in such sort that I can scarcely recognize my own resemblance; whereas I absolutely declare that I am an exceeding good-looking man, neither too tall nor too short, too old nor too young, with a person indifferently robust, a head rather inclining to be large, an easy swing in my walk, and that I wear my own hair, neither queued, nor cropped, nor turned up, but in a fair, pendulous oscillating club, tied with a yard of ninepenny black ribbon.

And now having said all that occurs to me on the present pathetic occasion—having made my speech, wrote my eulogy, and drawn my portrait, I bid my readers an affectionate farewell; exhorting them to live honestly and soberly—paying their taxes, and reverencing the state, the church, and the corporation—reading diligently the Bible and almanac, the newspaper and Salmagundi; which is all the reading an honest citizen has occasion for—and eschewing all spirit of faction, discontent, irreligion, and criticism.

Which is all at present

From their departed friend,

William Wizard.

THE END.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Page Changed from Changed to

31 Taking of concerts reminds me of that given Talking of concerts reminds me of that given

Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

Renumbered footnotes and, except for those labeled as William Wizard’s notes, placed them all at the end of the final chapter.