Excepting The Copies Sent To The Reviews,
And To My Friends In The Country, Not One, I Believe, Ever Left The
Bookseller's Warehouse.
The printer's bill drained my purse, and the
only notice that was taken of my work was contained in the
advertisements paid for by myself.
I could have borne all this, and have attributed it as usual to the
mismanagement of the publisher, or the want of taste in the public: and
could have made the usual appeal to posterity, but my village friends
would not let me rest in quiet. They were picturing me to themselves
feasting with the great, communing with the literary, and in the high
course of fortune and renown. Every little while, some one came to me
with a letter of introduction from the village circle, recommending him
to my attentions, and requesting that I would make him known in
society; with a hint that an introduction to the house of a celebrated
literary nobleman would be extremely agreeable.
I determined, therefore, to change my lodgings, drop my correspondence,
and disappear altogether from the view of my village admirers. Besides,
I was anxious to make one more poetic attempt. I was by no means
disheartened by the failure of my first. My poem was evidently too
didactic. The public was wise enough. It no longer read for
instruction. "They want horrors, do they?" said I, "I'faith, then they
shall have enough of them." So I looked out for some quiet retired
place, where I might be out of reach of my friends, and have leisure to
cook up some delectable dish of poetical "hell-broth."
I had some difficulty in finding a place to my mind, when chance threw
me in the way Of Canonbury Castle. It is an ancient brick tower, hard
by "merry Islington;" the remains of a hunting-seat of Queen Elizabeth,
where she took the pleasures of the country, when the neighborhood was
all woodland. What gave it particular interest in my eyes, was the
circumstance that it had been the residence of a poet. It was here
Goldsmith resided when he wrote his Deserted Village. I was shown the
very apartment. It was a relique of the original style of the castle,
with pannelled wainscots and gothic windows. I was pleased with its air
of antiquity, and with its having been the residence of poor Goldy.
"Goldsmith was a pretty poet," said I to myself, "a very pretty poet;
though rather of the old school. He did not think and feel so strongly
as is the fashion now-a-days; but had he lived in these times of hot
hearts and hot heads, he would have written quite differently."
In a few days I was quietly established in my new quarters; my books
all arranged, my writing desk placed by a window looking out into the
field; and I felt as snug as Robinson Crusoe, when he had finished his
bower. For several days I enjoyed all the novelty of change and the
charms which grace a new lodgings before one has found out their
defects.
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