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By the time the contents of the first volume had appeared in thisoccasional manner, they began to find their way across the Atlantic, andto be inserted, with many kind encomiums, in the London Literary Gazette.It was said, also, that a London bookseller intended to publish them in acollective form. I determined, therefore, to bring them forward myself,that they might at least have the benefit of my superintendence andrevision. I accordingly took the printed numbers which I had received fromthe United States, to Mr. John Murray, the eminent publisher, from whom Ihad already received friendly attentions, and left them with him forexamination, informing him that should he be inclined to bring them beforethe public, I had materials enough on hand for a second volume. Severaldays having elapsed without any communication from Mr. Murray, I addresseda note to him, in which I construed his silence into a tacit rejection ofmy work, and begged that the numbers I had left with him might be returnedto me. The following was his reply:
MY DEAR SIR: I entreat you to believe that I feel truly obliged by yourkind intentions towards me, and that I entertain the most unfeignedrespect for your most tasteful talents. My house is completely filled withworkpeople at this time, and I have only an office to transact businessin; and yesterday I was wholly occupied, or I should have done myself thepleasure of seeing you.
This was disheartening, and might have deterred me from any furtherprosecution of the matter, had the question of republication in GreatBritain rested entirely with me; but I apprehended the appearance of aspurious edition. I now thought of Mr. Archibald Constable as publisher,having been treated by him with much hospitality during a visit toEdinburgh; but first I determined to submit my work to Sir-Walter (thenMr.) Scott, being encouraged to do so by the cordial reception I hadexperienced from him at Abbotsford a few years previously, and by thefavorable opinion he had expressed to others of my earlier writings. Iaccordingly sent him the printed numbers of the Sketch-Book in a parcel bycoach, and at the same time wrote to him, hinting that since I had had thepleasure of partaking of his hospitality, a reverse had taken place in myaffairs which made the successful exercise of my pen all-important to me;I begged him, therefore, to look over the literary articles I hadforwarded to him, and, if he thought they would bear Europeanrepublication, to ascertain whether Mr. Constable would be inclined to bethe publisher.
I must, therefore, keep on pretty much as I have begun; writing when Ican, not when I would. I shall occasionally shift my residence and writewhatever is suggested by objects before me, or whatever rises in myimagination; and hope to write better and more copiously by and by.
Before the receipt of this most obliging letter, however, I had determinedto look to no leading bookseller for a launch, but to throw my work beforethe public at my own risk, and let it sink or swim according to itsmerits. I wrote to that effect to Scott, and soon received a reply:
The first volume of the Sketch-Book was put to press in London, as I hadresolved, at my own risk, by a bookseller unknown to fame, and without anyof the usual arts by which a work is trumpeted into notice. Still someattention had been called to it by the extracts which had previouslyappeared in the Literary Gazette, and by the kind word spoken by theeditor of that periodical, and it was getting into fair circulation, whenmy worthy bookseller failed before the first month was over, and the salewas interrupted.
At this juncture Scott arrived in London. I called to him for help, as Iwas sticking in the mire, and, more propitious than Hercules, he put hisown shoulder to the wheel. Through his favorable representations, Murraywas quickly induced to undertake the future publication of the work whichhe had previously declined. A further edition of the first volume wasstruck off and the second volume was put to press, and from that timeMurray became my publisher, conducting himself in all his dealings withthat fair, open, and liberal spirit which had obtained for him thewell-merited appellation of the Prince of Booksellers.
Thus, under the kind and cordial auspices of Sir Walter Scott, I began myliterary career in Europe; and I feel that I am but discharging, in atrifling degree, my debt of gratitude to the memory of that golden-heartedman in acknowledging my obligations to him. But who of his literarycontemporaries ever applied to him for aid or counsel that did notexperience the most prompt, generous, and effectual assistance?
This rambling propensity strengthened with my years. Books of voyages andtravels became my passion, and in devouring their contents, I neglectedthe regular exercises of the school. How wistfully would I wander aboutthe pier-heads in fine weather, and watch the parting ships, bound todistant climes; with what longing eyes would I gaze after their lesseningsails, and waft myself in imagination to the ends of the earth!
I had, besides all this, an earnest desire to see the great men of theearth. We have, it is true, our great men in America: not a city but hasan ample share of them. I have mingled among them in my time, and beenalmost withered by the shade into which they cast me; for there is nothingso baleful to a small man as the shade of a great one, particularly thegreat man of a city. But I was anxious to see the great men of Europe; forI had read in the works of various philosophers, that all animalsdegenerated in America, and man among the number. A great man of Europe,thought I, must therefore be as superior to a great man of America, as apeak of the Alps to a highland of the Hudson; and in this idea I wasconfirmed by observing the comparative importance and swelling magnitudeof many English travellers among us, who, I was assured, were very littlepeople in their own country. I will visit this land of wonders, thought I,and see the gigantic race from which I am degenerated.
There was a delicious sensation of mingled security and awe with which Ilooked down, from my giddy height, on the monsters of the deep at theiruncouth gambols: shoals of porpoises tumbling about the bow of the ship;the grampus, slowly heaving his huge form above the surface; or theravenous shark, darting, like a spectre, through the blue waters. Myimagination would conjure up all that I had heard or read of the wateryworld beneath me; of the finny herds that roam its fathomless valleys; ofthe shapeless monsters that lurk among the very foundations of the earth;and of those wild phantasms that swell the tales of fishermen and sailors.
Sometimes a distant sail, gliding along the edge of the ocean, would beanother theme of idle speculation. How interesting this fragment of aworld, hastening to rejoin the great mass of existence! What a gloriousmonument of human invention; which has in a manner triumphed over wind andwave; has brought the ends of the world into communion; has established aninterchange of blessings, pouring into the sterile regions of the northall the luxuries of the south; has diffused the light of knowledge, andthe charities of cultivated life; and has thus bound together thosescattered portions of the human race, between which nature seemed to havethrown an insurmountable barrier.
The sight of this wreck, as usual, gave rise to many dismal anecdotes.This was particularly the case in the evening, when the weather, which hadhitherto been fair, began to look wild and threatening, and gaveindications of one of those sudden storms that will sometimes break inupon the serenity of a summer voyage. As we sat round the dull light of alamp, in the cabin, that made the gloom more ghastly, everyone had histale of shipwreck and disaster. I was particularly struck with a short onerelated by the captain:
I confess these stories, for a time, put an end to all my fine fancies.The storm increased with the night. The sea was lashed into tremendousconfusion. There was a fearful, sullen sound of rushing waves and brokensurges. Deep called unto deep. At times the black volume of cloudsoverhead seemed rent asunder by flashes of lightning which quivered alongthe foaming billows, and made the succeeding darkness doubly terrible. Thethunders bellowed over the wild waste of waters, and were echoed andprolonged by the mountain waves. As I saw the ship staggering and plungingamong these roaring caverns, it seemed miraculous that she regained herbalance, or preserved her buoyancy. Her yards would dip into the water;her bow was almost buried beneath the waves. Sometimes an impending surgeappeared ready to overwhelm her, and nothing but a dexterous movement ofthe helm preserved her from the shock.
When I retired to my cabin, the awful scene still followed me. Thewhistling of the wind through the rigging sounded like funereal wailings.The creaking of the masts; the straining and groaning of bulkheads, as theship labored in the weltering sea, were frightful. As I heard the wavesrushing along the side of the ship, and roaring in my very ear, it seemedas if Death were raging around this floating prison, seeking for his prey:the mere starting of a nail, the yawning of a seam, might give himentrance.
I inquired his name, and was informed that it was ROSCOE. I drew back withan involuntary feeling of veneration. This, then, was an author ofcelebrity; this was one of those men whose voices have gone forth to theends of the earth; with whose minds I have communed even in the solitudesof America. Accustomed, as we are in our country, to know European writersonly by their works, we cannot conceive of them, as of other men,engrossed by trivial or sordid pursuits, and jostling with the crowd ofcommon minds in the dusty paths of life. They pass before our imaginationslike superior beings, radiant with the emanations of their genius, andsurrounded by a halo of literary glory.
To find, therefore, the elegant historian of the Medici mingling among thebusy sons of traffic, at first shocked my poetical ideas; but it is fromthe very circumstances and situation in which he has been placed, that Mr.Roscoe derives his highest claims to admiration. It is interesting tonotice how some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up underevery disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible waythrough a thousand obstacles. Nature seems to delight in disappointing theassiduities of art, with which it would rear legitimate dulness tomaturity; and to glory in the vigor and luxuriance of her chanceproductions. She scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and thoughsome may perish among the stony places of the world, and some be choked,by the thorns and brambles of early adversity, yet others will now andthen strike root even in the clefts of the rock, struggle bravely up intosunshine, and spread over their sterile birthplace all the beauties ofvegetation.
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