A LETTER

ON, TO, AND BY THE BOOK-PERSONAGE KNOWN BY THE NAME OF "THE READER."

DE

EAR SIR, OR VERY DEAR MADAM: Among the various phenomena of the literary world (to begin in proper book style), you have heard, doubtless, of editors who write letters to themselves, and are very much their humble servants, "Quidnunc," and "Philalethes." In other times the highest and the lowest periodical writers were equally given to this species of correspondence; the former in the excess of their wit, the latter because they get nobody but themselves to be their Constant Readers.* Of late years, such is the exuberance of literature, in Mr. Jerdan's, as well as the grammatical sense of the word, that we believe the custom survives with none but the very newest and worst setters-up of a publication. These gentlemen, here and there, are still auto-epistolary. One of them is his own "Impartial Observer," and differs with himself, "though with

* Mr. Spectator gleefully confesses that he is guilty of writing letters to himself. "I often choose," he says, "this way of casting my thoughts into a letter, for the following reasons. First, out of the policy of those who try their jest upon another before they own it themselves. Secondly, because I would extort a little praise from such who will never applaud anything whose author is known and certain. Thirdly, because it gave me an opportunity of introducing a great variety of characters into my works, which could not have been done had I always written in the person of the Spectator. Fourthly, because the dignity spectatorial would have suffered had I published as from myself those severe ludicrous compositions which I have ascribed to fictitious names and characters." Spectator, No. 542. — ED.

deference to his superior judgment." Another is happy to subscribe to his own opinion, being, at the same time, a subscriber to his "interesting miscellany;" and a third, sitting in his editor's room, and despairing of success with his "widely-circulated journal," is his "sincere well-wisher and admirer, Thomas Jones, Appleby." A certain description of gentlemen "about town" are said to have made great use of this epistolary talent, and been half the women of their acquaintance; and a tribe of doctors, resembling them, have been enabled to bear such grateful testimony to their own merits as to acquire an extensive correspondence of the ordinary kind, and write themselves into an equipage and a mansion.

But you have yet to learn that a man may write a letter to himself and not be aware of it; nay, that all his readers but one may join him in the correspondence, and all be in the same predicament. You are now this minute doing it, so are they; and, what is more, myself, who am the sole exception, are you and they too. I am the editor and all his readers. I am a lady of quality and a blacksmith; I am a soldier, and at the same time a clergyman; a dandy and a quaker; an old lady and a young one; a man of yesterday, and yet Martial addressed epigrams to me ; an intimate friend of Sophocles, and yet Sir Walter is continually bespeaking my good opinion. In short, I am the little, big, slender, robust, young, old, rich, plain, poor, handsome, male, female, and neuter personage, known by the name of "The Reader." I am you, Reader, whatever you may think of it, and you are all of us. You address your prefaces to me,

and have others addressed, for the same reason, to yourself. I am the Benevolent Reader of the old books; also the Courteous, the Indulgent, and the Impartial, but, above all, the Discerning. The affectation of independence in modern writers has induced. them to leave off addressing me by some of these epithets, yet my good word is still bespoken as the Indulgent and the Candid; and if I am not always styled the Discerning, it is not the less given me to understand that I am so. I should like to see the author that ventured to treat me otherwise. It is true, a hint is now and then ventured about " commonplace readers," and "readers of the ordinary description:" but these are mere words. I will venture to affirm, that if the Reader ever chose to inquire whether it was he that was intended by those petulant appellations, the writer would infallibly say no. Reader is always treated with respect. The least thing said to him, is, that he is "requested:" - the Reader is requested to do so and so; to " observe," or to "bear in mind." It is also asked whether he will be "kind enough" or "good enough" to do this and that. Furthermore, being a man, he is of necessity a gentleman, as surely as the cobbler before the hustings; and inasmuch as he is of the female sex, he is fair; the fair Reader; 66 our fair Readers will do us the honor to observe," &c.

The

It is in this corporate character that I now address you. Being The Reader, I am everybody who reads, and therefore may safely speak in the first person; for nobody quarrels with himself in the person of another, however willing he may be to contemplate his

merits in him; at least, it requires a rare stretch of philosophy to do so, and the modesty is sure to be accompanied by something that consoles it.

As a reader of a ripe age, who was deep in the gilt nursery books of the last century, it may be allowed me to regret the cessation of those quaint old dreams of wood-cuts, now confined to ballads on the walls, or only reprinted for the benefit of the curious. I acknowledge the superiority of the present engravings, and allow our new infant self, if he has any taste for the fine arts (which is not always the case), to "quiz" the stuck-up attitudes, blotted eyes, and impossible legs and arms of our old King Pepins and worthy London apprentices. But there was something remote and ideal in those very deficiencies in the likeness to things known. Such a London apprentice as that might, for aught you know, thrust his arms down the throat of two lions, conveniently gaping on each side of him, and pluck out their hearts. Such a little boy as King Pepin, all eye and flapped waistcoat, might come to be a man wonderful, and ride in his coach. We do not defend the rewards generally promised in the infant literature of that period, such as coaches and great puddings, though the private taste seems to lie a good deal that way still. Neither will we stand by the morality of Master Jemmy the bad boy, and Master Jacky the good one, the former of whom is bound to be eaten by lions, while the latter becomes Lord Mayor; for it is now doubted by philosophers in the city, whether every Lord Mayor was a good little boy; and also, whether every naughty boy goes to Africa or comes to the

poorhouse. Such determinations of events will not be allowed in this refining age, philosophers themselves being sometimes poor, and rich men not always having been good. We are aware that the great eye of this generation looks rather to the general good than the particular example of success, and inculcates a handsome prudence, which, allowing folly its excesses, saves it from bad blood, and encourages it to grow wiser. We have nothing to say against that; but still we may be allowed to admire the picturecuts of Master Jemmy and Master Jacky, now so happy at home, playing their battledoor and shuttlecock, and then both, methinks, so unhappy afterwards, the one devoured by roaring lions, and the other stuck up in his fine coach without his brother. To the impressive dead bodies of "Smith, Jones, and Robinson," in Mr. Dilworth's Spelling-Book (was it not?), who would swim in the water when they were told to remain on dry land, and to the awful admonitory figure of the schoolmaster in his cocked hat, with one finger up, we cannot refuse our respect. It is somewhat begged of us, we grant, by early habit, and by the sight of those stark-naked, pale pieces of stiffness on the ground; to say nothing of the warm and well-clothed teacher. "The great teacher, Death," and the hardly inferior solemnity of the teacher academical, divide the awfulness between them. Otherwise we could have wished that Death and a little daring had not been brought so peremptorily together. But things may have been good at a former period which are not desirable at present.

As "the reader" of the present times, nothing