A Literary Mosaic - Page 2

instructions to the captain of one of their vessels.
It ran in this way :--

"From England, Captain, you must steer a
Course directly to Madeira,
Land the casks of salted beef,
Then away to Teneriffe.
Pray be careful, cool, and wary
With the merchants of Canary.
When you leave them make the most
Of the trade winds to the coast.
Down it you shall sail as far
As the land of Calabar,
And from there you'll onward go
To Bonny and Fernando Po"----

and so on for four pages. The captain, instead of treasuring up
this little gem, called at the office next day, and demanded with
quite unnecessary warmth what the thing meant, and I was compelled
to translate it all back into prose. On this, as on other similar
occasions, my employer took me severely to task--for he was, you
see, a man entirely devoid of all pretensions to literary taste!

All this, however, is a mere preamble, and leads up to the fact
that after ten years or so of drudgery I inherited a legacy which,
though small, was sufficient to satisfy my simple wants. Finding
myself independent, I rented a quiet house removed from the uproar
and bustle of London, and there I settled down with the
intention of producing some great work which should single me
out from the family of the Smiths, and render my name immortal. To
this end I laid in several quires of foolscap, a box of quill pens,
and a sixpenny bottle of ink, and having given my housekeeper
injunctions to deny me to all visitors, I proceeded to look round
for a suitable subject.

I was looking round for some weeks. At the end of that time I
found that I had by constant nibbling devoured a large number of
the quills, and had spread the ink out to such advantage, what with
blots, spills, and abortive commencements, that there appeared to
be some everywhere except in the bottle. As to the story itself,
however, the facility of my youth had deserted me completely, and
my mind remained a complete blank; nor could I, do what I would,
excite my sterile imagination to conjure up a single incident or
character.

In this strait I determined to devote my leisure to running rapidly
through the works of the leading English novelists, from Daniel
Defoe to the present day, in the hope of stimulating my latent
ideas and of getting a good grasp of the general tendency of
literature. For some time past I had avoided opening any work of
fiction because one of the greatest faults of my youth had been
that I invariably and unconsciously mimicked the style of the last
author whom I had happened to read. Now, however, I made up my
mind to seek safety in a multitude, and by consulting ALL the
English classics to avoid?? the danger of imitating any one too