ach; the monkey has his cheek, the opossum her pouch; and, so necessary is some convenience of this kind for the human animal, that the savage who cares not for clothing makes for himself a pocket if he can. The Hindoo carries his snuffbox in his turban. Some of the inhabitants of Congo make a secret fob in their woolly toupee, of which, as P. Labat says, the worst use they make is-to carry poison in it. The Matolas, a long-haired race who border upon the Caffres, form their locks into a sort of hollow cylinder, in which they bear about their little implements; certes a more sensible bag than such as is worn at court. The New Zealander is less ingenious; he makes a large opening in his ear and carries his knife in it. The Ogres, who are worse than savages, and whose ignorance and brutality are in proportion to their bulk, are said, upon the authority of tradition, when they have picked up a stray traveller or two more than they require for their supper, to lodge them in a hollow tooth as a place of security till breakfast; whence it may be inferred that they are not liable to toothache, and that they make no use of toothpicks. Ogres, savages, beasts, and birds all require something to serve the purpose of a pocket. Thus much for the necessity of the thing. Touching its antiquity much might be said; for it would not be difficult to show, with that little assistance from the auxiliaries must, and have, and been, which enabled Whitaker of Manchester to write whole quartoes of hypothetical history in the potential mood, that pockets are coeval with clothing: and, as erudite men have maintained that language and even letters are of divine origin, there might with like reason be a conclusion drawn from the twenty-first verse of the third chapter of the book of Genesis, which it would not be easy to impugn. Moreover, nature herself shows us the utility, the importance, nay, the indispensability, or, to take a hint from the pure language of our diplomatists, the sinequanonniness of pockets. There is but one organ which is common to all animals whatsoever : some are without eyes, many without noses; some have no heads, others no tails; some neither one nor the other; some there are who have no brains, others very pappy ones; some no hearts, others very bad ones; but all have a stomachand what is the stomach but a live inside pocket? Hath not Van Helmont said of it," Saccus vel pera est, ut ciborum olla?"

Dr. Towers used to have his coat pockets made of capacity to hold a quarto volume-a wise custom; but requiring stout cloth, good buckram, and strong thread well waxed. I do not so greatly commend the humour of Dr. Ingenhouz, whose coat was lined with pockets of all sizes, wherein, in his latter years, when science had become to him as a plaything, he carried about various materials for chymical experiments: among the rest so many compositions for fulminating powders in glass tubes, separated only by a cork in the

middle of the tube, that, if any person had unhappily given him a blow with a stick, he might have blown up himself and the doctor too. For myself, four coat pockets of the ordinary dimensions content me; in these a sufficiency of conveniences may be carried, and that sufficiency methodically arranged. For mark me, gentle or ungentle reader! there is nothing like method in pockets, as well as in composition: and what orderly and methodical man would have his pocket handkerchief, and his pocketbook, and the key of his door, (if he be a bachelor living in chambers,) and his knife, and his loose pence and halfpence, and the letters which peradventure he might just have received, or peradventure he may intend to drop in the postoffice, twopenny or general, as he passes by, and his snuff, if he be accustomed so to regale his olfactory conduits, or his tobacco-box, if he prefer the masticable to the pulverized weed; or his box of lozenges, if he should be troubled with a tickling cough; and the sugar plums and the gingerbread nuts which he may be carrying home to his own children, or to any other small men and women upon whose hearts he may have a design; who, I say, would like to have all this in chaos and confusion, one lying upon the other, and the thing which is wanted first fated always to be undermost!-(Mr. Wilberforce knows the inconvenience ;)the snuff working its way out to the gingerbread, the sugar plums insinuating themselves into the folds of the pocket handkerchief, the pence grinding the lozenges to dust for the benefit of the pocketbook, and the door key busily employed in unlocking the letters?

Now, forasmuch as the commutation of female pockets for the reticule leadeth to inconveniences like this, (not to mention that the very name of commutation ought to be held in abhorrence by all who hold daylight and fresh air essential to the comfort and salubrity of dwellinghouses,) I abominate that bag of the Bhow Begum, notwithstanding the beauty of the silver chain upon the black velvet. And perceiving at this time that the clasp of its silver setting was broken, so that the mouth of the bag was gaping pitiably, like a sick or defunct oyster, I congratulated her as she came in upon this further proof of the commodiousness of the invention; for here, in the country, there is no workman who can mend that clasp, and the bag must therefore either be laid aside, or used in that deplorable state.

When the Bhow Begum had seated herself I told her how my proffered dedication had been thrice rejected with scorn, and repeating the offer I looked for a more gracious reply. But, as if scorn had been the influenza of the female mind that morning, she answered, "No; indeed she would not have it after it had been refused by everybody else." "Nay, nay,” said I; “it is as much in your character to accept, as it was in their's to refuse." While I was speaking she took

a pinch of snuff; the nasal titillation co-operated with my speech, for when any one of the senses is pleased, the rest are not likely to continue out of humour. Well," she replied, "I will have it dedicated to me, because I shall delight in the book." And she powdered the carpet with tobacco dust as she spake.

CHAPTER II. A. I.

CONCERNING DEDICATIONS, PRINTERS' TYPES, AND IMPERIAL INK.

Il y aura des clefs, et des ouvertures de mes secrets.

LA PRETIEUSE.

MONSIEUR DELLON, having been in the inquisition at Goa, dedicated an account of that tribunal, and of his own sufferings, to Mademoiselle Du Cambout de Coislin, in these words :

MADEMOISELLE,

:

J'aurois tort de me plaindre des rigueurs de l'inquisition, et des mauvais traitemens que j'ay éprouvez de la part de ses ministres, puisqu'en me fournissant la matiére de cet ouvrage, ils m'ont procuré l'avantage de vous le dédier.

This is the book which that good man Claudius Buchanan with so much propriety put into the hands of the grand inquisitor of India, when he paid him a visit at the inquisition, and asked him his opinion of the accuracy of the relation upon the spot!

The Frenchman's compliment may truly be said to have been far-fetched and dearly bought. Heaven forefend that I should either go so far for one, or purchase it at such a price!

A dedication has oftentimes cost the unhappy author a greater consumption of thumb and finger nail than the whole book besides, and all varieties of matter and manner have been resorted to. Mine must be so far in character with the delectable history which it introduces that it shall be unlike all which have ever gone before it. I knew a man (one he was who would have been an ornament to his country if methodism and madness had not combined to overthrow a bright and creative intellect) who, in one of his insaner moods, printed a sheet and a half of muddy rhapsodies with the title of the "Standard of God displayed:" and he prefaced it by saying that the price of a perfect book, upon a perfect subject, ought to be a perfect sum in a perfect coin; that is to say one guinea. Now, as Dr. Daniel Dove was a perfect

doctor, and his horse Nobs was a perfect horse, and as I humbly hope their history will be a perfect history, so ought the dedication thereunto to be perfect in its kind. Perfect therefore it shall be, as far as kalo-typography can make it, For though it would be hopeless to exceed all former dedications in the turn of a compliment or of a sentence, in the turn of the letters it is possible to exceed them all. It was once my fortune to employ a printer who had a love for his art; and having a taste that way myself, we discussed the merits of a new font one day when I happened to call in upon him. I objected to the angular inclination of a capital italic A, which stood upon its pins as if it were starting aghast from the next letter on the left, and was about to tumble upon that to the right; in which case down would go the rest of the word, like a row of soldiers which children make with cards. My printer was too deeply enamoured with the beauties of his font to have either ear or eye for its defects; and hastily waiving that point he called my attention to a capital R in the same line, which cocked up its tail just as if it had been nicked; that cock of the tail had fascinated him. Look, sir," said he, while his eyes glistened with all the ardour of an amateur; "look at that turn!-that's sweet, sir!" and drawing off the hand with the fore finger of which he had indicated it, he described in the air the turn that had delighted him, in a sort of heroic flourish, his head with a diminished axis, like the inner stile of a pentagraph, following the movement. I have never seen that R since without

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remembering him.

** *** ** ****** *** *** **** ** *** ***** ******* ** ******* *** ********* ***** *** *****

*** ******* ***** ** ********** *** *** *******. He who can read the stars, may read in them the secret which he seeketh.

But the turns of my dedication to the Bhow Begum shall not be trusted to the letter founders, a set of men remarkable for involving their craft in such mystery that no one ever taught it to another, every one who has practised it having been obliged either surreptitiously to obtain the secret, or to invent a method for himself. It shall be in the old English letter, not only because that alphabet hath in its curves and angles, its frettings and redundant lines, a sort of picturesque similitude with Gothic architecture, but also because in its breadth and beauty it will display the colour of the ink to most advantage. For the dedication shall not be printed in black after the ordinary fashion, nor in white like the sermon upon the excise laws, nor in red after the mode of Mr. Dibdin's half titles, but in the colour of that imperial encaustic ink, which by the laws of the Roman empire it was death for any but the Roman emperor himself to use. Britons live in a free country, wherein every man may use what coloured ink seemeth good to him, and put as much

We

gall in it as he pleases, or any other ingredient whatsoever.* Moreover, this is an imperial age, in which, to say nothing of M. Ingelby, the Emperor of the Conjurers, we have seen no fewer than four new emperors. Him of Russia, who did not think the old title of Peter the Great good enough for him; him of France, for whom any name but that of tyrant or murderer is too good; him of Austria, who took up one imperial appellation to cover over the humiliating manner in which he laid another down; and him of Hayti, who if he be wise will order all public business to be carried on in the talkee-talkee tongue, and make it high treason for any person to speak or write French in his dominions. We also must dub our old parliament imperial forsooth! that we may not be behindhand with the age. Then we have imperial dining tables! imperial oil for nourishing the hair! imperial liquid for boot tops! Yea, and by all the Cæsars deified and damnified, imperial blacking! For my part I love to go with the stream, so I will have an imperial dedication.

Behold it, reader. Therein is mystery.

* In the English copy this dedication is printed, not with black ink, but with some pigment of a hue unknown in the printing office of the American publishers, and not to be imitated without some expense and more trouble and loss of time. They have, therefore, adventured to substitute for it plain honest sable, at the hazard even of spoiling the author's mysterious mystery.