The West India Sketch Book

INTRODUCTION.

"What's in a name?-that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet"

So says Juliet ;

"Name's nothing, merit's all, rhubarb's rhubarb, call it what you will"—

So says Ollapod.

THERE is no reasoning upon opinion when love and medicine are concerned, so we will not dispute the very natural conclusion of the fair inamorata, and the renowned medico-military functionary, so far as relates to roses and rhubarb ;-but certainly, in other matters, evidence is not wanted

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to establish a conviction, that a name, or, which is the same thing, a title, hath a marvellous influence upon what is termed the weak side of human nature. "There is in souls a sympathy with sounds," as well as with shadows, which constitute a large portion of human felicity. So sensible, indeed, was Dr. Johnson, that the success of a literary work depended greatly upon judicious selection of a persuasive cognomen, that he confessed to have tortured his prolific brain for a whole night, as he lay floundering in his bed like a stranded porpoise, before he could fix upon an appropriate designation to those exquisite morsels of morality which appeared under the name of "the Rambler."

Certainly we have not been so felicitous in the selection of a title to the work before us. The name of the West Indies has become so inevitably associated with ideas of misery and suffering, the public palate has, for so long a period, been nauseated by its frequent repetition, and "Sketch-Books" have become so familiar to the reading world, as vehicles for empirical compounds in literary quackery, that

our own label may naturally excite suspicion at first sight, provoke a revulsion in the economy of the mind, and cause rejection of the preparation, upon the conviction that the ingredients are pernicious, that they consist of a narcotical recapitulation, "to be taken as before," of alleged atrocities, or refuted calumnies, with which the public mind has been amused and abused for the last quarter of a century; instead of what?-taste, good reader, taste. Yes, had we sooner reflected upon the importance of a title to insure the sale of a work, we should have adopted that of "Pickles and Preserves from the West Indies, in two packages"—rather than the "West India Sketch Book, in two volumes"-but the thing is done, we never gave the matter a moment's consideration.

It is manifest, therefore, at least to ourselves, that we appear before the public under every disadvantage, and not less so, because—owing to the delay in the execution of the engravings, and to one of those "natural shocks, that flesh is heir to"-two works, bearing some affinity to it, have appeared since the "West India Sketch-Book"