purveyor of how much happiness; the friend whom we
recall as the constant benefactor of our youth!
How well I remember the type and the brownish paper
of the old duodecimo “Tales of my Landlord!”
I have never dared to read the “Pirate,”
and the “Bride of Lammermoor,” or “Kenilworth,”
from that day to this, because the finale is unhappy,
and people die, and are murdered at the end.
But “Ivanhoe,” and “Quentin Durward!”
Oh! for a half-holiday, and a quiet corner, and one
of those books again! Those books, and perhaps
those eyes with which we read them; and, it may be,
the brains behind the eyes! It may be the tart
was good; but how fresh the appetite was! If the
gods would give me the desire of my heart, I should
be able to write a story which boys would relish for
the next few dozen of centuries. The boy-critic
loves the story: grown up, he loves the author
who wrote the story. Hence the kindly tie is
established between writer and reader, and lasts pretty
nearly for life. I meet people now who don’t
care for Walter Scott, or the “Arabian Nights;”
I am sorry for them, unless they in their time have
found
their romancer—their charming
Scheherazade. By the way, Walter, when you are
writing, tell me who is the favorite novelist in the
fourth form now? have you got anything so good and
kindly as dear Miss Edgeworth’s Frank?
It used to belong to a fellow’s sisters generally;
but though he pretended to despise it, and said, “Oh,
stuff for girls!” he read it; and I think there
were one or two passages which would try my eyes now,
were I to meet with the little book.
As for Thomas and Jeremiah (it is only my witty way
of calling Tom and Jerry), I went to the British Museum
the other day on purpose to get it; but somehow, if
you will press the question so closely, on reperusal,
Tom and Jerry is not so brilliant as I had supposed
it to be. The pictures are just as fine as ever;
and I shook hands with broad-backed Jerry Hawthorn
and Corinthian Tom with delight, after many years’
absence. But the style of the writing, I own,
was not pleasing to me; I even thought it a little
vulgar—well! well! other writers have been
considered vulgar—and as a description of
the sports and amusements of London in the ancient
times, more curious than amusing.
But the pictures!—oh! the pictures are
noble still! First, there is Jerry arriving from
the country, in a green coat and leather gaiters,
and being measured for a fashionable suit at Corinthian
House, by Corinthian Tom’s tailor. Then
away for the career of pleasure and fashion.
The park! delicious excitement! The theatre! the
saloon!! the green-room!!! Rapturous bliss—the
opera itself! and then perhaps to Temple Bar, to knock
down A Charley there! There are Jerry
and Tom, with their tights and little cocked hats,
coming from the opera—very much as gentlemen
in waiting on royalty are habited now. There they
are at Almack’s itself, amidst a crowd of high-bred