The Heroine. Barrett Eaton Stannard

      'Of the lives of poets, collected from posthumous record, and oral tradition, as little is known with certainty, much must be left to conjecture. He therefore, who presents his own memoirs to the public, may surely merit the reasonable applause of all, whose minds are emancipated from the petulance of envy, the fastidiousness of hypercriticism, and the exacerbation of party.

      'I was born in the year 1771, at 24, Swallow Street; and should the curious reader wish to examine the mansion, he has every thing to hope from the alert urbanity of its present landlord, and the civil obsequiousness of his notable lady. He who gives civility, gives what costs him little, while remuneration may be multiplied in an indefinite ratio.

      'My parents were reputable tobacconists, and kept me behind the counter, to negociate the titillating dust, and the tranquillizing quid. Of genius the first spark which I elicited, was reading a ballad in the shop, while the woman who sold it to me was stealing a canister of snuff. This specimen of mental abstraction (a quality which I still preserve), shewed that I would never make a good tradesman; but it also shewed, that I would make an excellent scholar. A tutor was accordingly appointed for me; and during a triennial course of study, I had passed from the insipidity of the incipient hic, hæc, hoc, to the music of a Virgil, and the thunder of a Demosthenes.

      'Debarred by my secluded life from copying the polished converse of high society, I have at least endeavoured to avoid the vulgar phraseology of low; and to discuss the very weather with a sententious association of polysyllabical ratiocination.

      'With illustrations of my juvenile character, recollection but ill supplies me. That I have always disliked the diurnal ceremony of ablution, and a hasty succession of linen, is a truth which he who has a sensitive texture of skin will easily credit; which he who will not credit, may, if he pleases, deny; and may, if he can, controvert. But I assert the fact, and I expect to be believed, because I assert it. Life, among its quiet blessings, can boast of few things more comfortable than indifference to dress.

      'To honey with my bread, and to apple-sauce with my goose, I have ever felt a romantic attachment, resulting from the classical allusions which they inspire. That man is little to be envied, whose honey would not remind him of the Hyblean honey, and whose apple-sauce would not suggest to him the golden apple.

      'But notwithstanding my cupidity for such dainties, I have that happy adaptation of taste which can banquet, with delight, upon hesternal offals; can nibble ignominious radishes, or masticate superannuated mutton.

      'My first series of teeth I cut at the customary time, and the second succeeded them with sufficient punctuality. This fact I had from my mother.

      'My first poetical attempt was an epitaph on the death of my tutor, and it was produced at the precocious age of ten.

      Here lies the body of John Tomkins, who Departed this life, aged fifty-two; After a long and painful illness, that He bore with Christian fortitude, though fat. He died lamented deeply by this poem, And all who had the happiness to know him.

      'This composition my father did not long survive; and my mother, to the management of the business feeling quite unequal, relinquished it altogether, and retired with the respectable accumulation of a thousand pounds.

      'I still pursued my studies, and from time to time accommodated confectionaries and band-boxes with printed sheets, which the world might have read, had it pleased, and might have been pleased with, had it read. For some years past, however, the booksellers have declined to publish my productions at all. Envious enemies poison their minds against me, and persuade them that my brain is disordered. For, like Rousseau, I am the victim of implacable foes; but my genius, like an arch, becomes stronger the more it is opprest.

      'On a pretty little maid of my mother's, I made my next poetical effort, which I present to the reader.

      'Of the girl, an immediate dismission ensued; but for what reason, let the sedulous researches of future biographers decide.

      'At length, having resolved on writing a volume of Eclogues, I undertook an excursion into the country to learn pastoral manners, and write in comfort, far from my tailor. An amputated loaf, and a contracted Theocritus, constituted my companions. Not a cloud blotted the blue concave, not a breeze superinduced undulation over the verdant tresses of the trees.

      'In vain I questioned the youths and maidens about their Damons and Delias; their Dryads and Hamadryads; their Amabœan contentions and their amorous incantations. When I talked of Pan, they asked me if it was a pan of milk; when I requested to see the pastoral pipe, they shewed me a pipe of tobacco; when I spoke of satyrs with horns, they bade me go to the husbands; and when I spoke of fawns with cloven heel, they bade me go to the Devil. While charmed with a thatched and shaded cottage, its slimy pond or smoking dunghill disgusted me; and when I recumbed on a bank of cowslips and primroses, my features were transpierced by wasps and ants and nettles. I fell asleep under sunshine, and awoke under a torrent of rain. Dripping and disconsolate, I returned to my mother, drank some whey; and since that misadventurous perambulation have never ruralized again. To him who subjects himself to a recurrence of disaster, the praise of boldness may possibly be accorded, but the praise of prudence must certainly be denied.

      'A satirical eclogue, however, was the fruit of this expedition. It is called Antique Amours, and is designed to shew, that passions which are adapted to one time of life, appear ridiculous in another. The reader shall have it.