Damme, sir, if I can conceive how
you hit upon such ideas!"
I must confess I did not always relish his misquotations, which
sometimes made absolute nonsense of the passages; but what author
stands upon trifles when he is praised? Never had I spent a more
delightful evening. I did not perceive how the time flew. I could not
bear to separate, but continued walking on, arm in arm with him past my
lodgings, through Camden town, and across Crackscull Common, talking
the whole way about my poem.
When we were half-way across the common he interrupted me in the midst
of a quotation by telling me that this had been a famous place for
footpads, and was still occasionally infested by them; and that a man
had recently been shot there in attempting to defend himself.
"The more fool he!" cried I. "A man is an idiot to risk life, or even
limb, to save a paltry purse of money. It's quite a different case from
that of a duel, where one's honor is concerned. For my part," added I,
"I should never think of making resistance against one of those
desperadoes."
"Say you so?" cried my friend in green, turning suddenly upon me, and
putting a pistol to my breast, "Why, then have at you, my lad! - come,
disburse! empty! unsack!"
In a word, I found that the muse had played me another of her tricks,
and had betrayed me into the hands of a footpad. There was no time to
parley; he made me turn my pockets inside out; and hearing the sound of
distant footsteps, he made one fell swoop upon purse, watch, and all,
gave me a thwack over my unlucky pate that laid me sprawling on the
ground; and scampered away with his booty.
I saw no more of my friend in green until a year or two afterwards;
when I caught a sight of his poetical countenance among a crew of
scapegraces, heavily ironed, who were on the way for transportation. He
recognized me at once, tipped me an impudent wink, and asked me how I
came on with the history of Jack Straw's castle.
The catastrophe at Crackscull Common put an end to my summer's
campaign. I was cured of my poetical enthusiasm for rebels, robbers,
and highwaymen. I was put out of conceit of my subject, and what was
worse, I was lightened of my purse, in which was almost every farthing
I had in the world. So I abandoned Sir Richard Steele's cottage in
despair, and crept into less celebrated, though no less poetical and
airy lodgings in a garret in town.
I see you are growing weary, so I will not detain you with any more of
my luckless attempts to get astride of Pegasus. Still I could not
consent to give up the trial and abandon those dreams of renown in
which I had indulged. How should I ever be able to look the literary
circle of my native village in the face, if I were so completely to
falsify their predictions. For some time longer, therefore, I continued
to write for fame, and of course was the most miserable dog in
existence, besides being in continual risk of starvation.
I have many a time strolled sorrowfully along, with a sad heart and an
empty stomach, about five o'clock, and looked wistfully down the areas
in the west end of the town; and seen through the kitchen windows the
fires gleaming, and the joints of meat turning on the spits and
dripping with gravy; and the cook maids beating up puddings, or
trussing turkeys, and have felt for the moment that if I could but have
the run of one of those kitchens, Apollo and the muses might have the
hungry heights of Parnassus for me. Oh, sir! talk of meditations among
the tombs - they are nothing so melancholy as the meditations of a poor
devil without penny in pouch, along a line of kitchen windows towards
dinner-time.
At length, when almost reduced to famine and despair, the idea all at
once entered my head, that perhaps I was not so clever a fellow as the
village and myself had supposed. It was the salvation of me. The moment
the idea popped into my brain, it brought conviction and comfort with
it. I awoke as from a dream. I gave up immortal fame to those who could
live on air; took to writing for mere bread, and have ever since led a
very tolerable life of it. There is no man of letters so much at his
ease, sir, as he that has no character to gain or lose. I had to train
myself to it a little, however, and to clip my wings short at first, or
they would have carried me up into poetry in spite of myself. So I
determined to begin by the opposite extreme, and abandoning the higher
regions of the craft, I came plump down to the lowest, and turned
creeper.
"Creeper," interrupted I, "and pray what is that?" Oh, sir! I see you
are ignorant of the language of the craft; a creeper is one who
furnishes the newspapers with paragraphs at so much a line, one that
goes about in quest of misfortunes; attends the Bow-street office; the
courts of justice and every other den of mischief and iniquity. We are
paid at the rate of a penny a line, and as we can sell the same
paragraph to almost every paper, we sometimes pick up a very decent
day's work. Now and then the muse is unkind, or the day uncommonly
quiet, and then we rather starve; and sometimes the unconscionable
editors will clip our paragraphs when they are a little too rhetorical,
and snip off twopence or threepence at a go.
