University of Virginia Library

UNPUBLISHED PREFACE
TO THE NORTH-AMERICAN STORIES, ALLUDED TO IN PAGE V.

The author of this work is now under the necessity of bidding
the novel-readers of the day, on both sides of the water,
farewell, and in all probability, forever. By them it may be
considered a trivial affair—a time for pleasantry, or peradventure
for a formal expression of what are called good wishes.
But by him, who does not feel like other men—or does not understand
their language, when they talk in this way, it will ever
be regarded as a very serious thing. He would neither conceal
nor deny the truth—he would not so affront the feeling
within him—and he says therefore without affectation or ceremony,
that it goes to his heart even to bid the novel-readers
of the age, the few that have read his novels, it were better to
say—farewell.

These volumes are the last of a series which even from his
youth up, he had been accustomed to meditate upon as a worthy
and affectionate offering to his family and to those who
have made many a long winter day in a dreary climate, very
cheerful and pleasant to him—the daughters of a dear friend—
of one who, if his eye should ever fall upon this page, will understand
immediately more than a chapter could tell, of the
deep wayward strange motives that have influenced the author
to say thus much and no more, while recurring for the last
time to the bright vision of his youth. And the little that he
does say now, is not said for the world;—for what care they
about the humble and innocent creatures, whose gentleness and
sincerity about their own fire-side, were for a long time all
that kept a man, who was weary and sick of the great world,
from leaving it in despair? No, it is not said for them; but
for any one of that large family who may happen to be alive
now, and in the way of remembering “the stranger that was
within their gates”—when to the world he may be as if he never
had been. Let them not be amazed when they discover the
truth; nor afraid nor ashamed to see that the man whom they

knew only as the stranger from a far country, was also an author.

In other days, angels were entertained in the shape of travellers
and way-faring men; but ye—had ye known every stranger
that knocked at your door to be an angel, or a messenger
of the Most High, could not have treated him more like an
immortal creature than ye did that unknown man, who now
bears witness to your simplicity and great goodness of heart.
With you it was enough that a fellow-creature was unhappy—
you strove to make him happy; and having done this, you sent
him away, ignorant alike of his people, his country and his
name.

This work is the last of the sort I believe—the very last I
shall ever write. Reader—stop!—lay down the book for a
moment and answer me. Do you feel no emotion at the sight
of that word? You are surprised at the question. Why should
you feel any, you ask. Why should you?—let us reason together
for a moment. Can it be that you are able to hear of
the final consummation of a hope which had been the chief
stay of a fellow-creature for many—many years?—Can it
be that you feel no sort of emotion at hearing him say, Lo! I
have finished the work—it is the last—no sensation of inquietude?
Perhaps you now begin to see differently; perhaps
you would now try to exculpate yourself. You are willing to
admit now that the affair is one of a graver aspect than you
first imagined. You are half ready to deny now that you ever
considered it otherwise. But mark me—out of your own
mouth you are condemned. Twice have I said already—three
times have I said already, that this was the last work of the sort
I should ever write, and you have read the declaration as you
would, the passing motto of a title-page. You neither cared
for it, nor thought of it; and had I not alarmed you by my abruptness,
compelled you to stop and think, and awed you by
steadfastly rebuking your inhumanity, you would not have
known by to-morrow whether I had spoken of it as my last
work or not. Consider what I say—is it not the truth?—can
you deny it? And yet you—you are one of the multitude

who dare to sit in judgment upon the doings of your fellow
men. It is on what you and such as you say, that authors are
to depend for that which is of more value to them than the
breath of life—character. How dare you!—You read without
reflection, and you hear without understanding. Yet upon the
judgment of such as you—so made up, it is that the patient
and the profound, the thoughtful and the gifted, are to rely for
immortality.

To return to what I was about saying—the work now before
you, reader, is the last of a series, meditated as I have already
told you, from my youth. It was but a dream at first—a dream
of my boyhood, indefinite, vague and shadowy; but as I grew
up, it grew stronger and braver and more substantial. For
years it did not deserve the name of a plan—it was merely a
breathing after I hardly knew what, a hope that I should live
to do something in a literary way worthy of my people—accompanied
however with an inappeasable yearning for the
time and opportunity to arrive. But so it was, that, notwithstanding
all my anxiety and resolution, I could not bring myself
to make the attempt—even the attempt—until it appeared
no longer possible for me to do what for years I had been very
anxious to do. The engagement was of too sacred a nature
to be trifled with—perhaps the more sacred in my view for being
made only with myself, and without a witness; for engagements
having no other authority than our moral sense of duty
to ourselves, would never be performed, after they grew irksome
or heavy, unless we were scrupulous in proportion to
the facility with which we might escape if we would.

This indeterminate, haunting desire to do what I had so engaged
to do, at last however began to give way before the serious
and necessary business of life, and the continually augmenting
pressure of duties too solemn to be slighted for any—I had almost
said for any earthly consideration. Yea more, to confess
the whole truth, I had begun to regard the enterprise itself—so
prone are we to self-deception, so ready at finding excuses
where we have a duty to perform—as hardly worthy of
much power, and as altogether beneath an exalted ambition.
But here I was groatly mistaken; for I have an idea now, that

a great novel—such a novel as might be made—if all the powers
that could be employed upon it were found in one man,
would be the greatest production of human genius. It is a law
and a history of itself—to every people—and throughout all
time—in literature and morals—in character and passion—
yea—in what may be called the fire-side biography of nations.
It would be, if rightly managed, a picture of the present for futurity—a
picture of human nature, not only here but every
where—a portrait of man—a history of the human heart—a
book therefore, written not only in a universal, but in what
may be considered as an everlasting language—the language
of immortal, indistructable spirits. Such are the parables of
Him who spoke that language best.

Again however, the subject was revived. Sleeping and
waking, by night and by day, it was before me; and at last I
began to perceive that if the attempt were ever to be made, it
must be made by one desperate, convulsive, instantaneous effort.
I determined to deliberate no longer—or rather to stand
no longer, shivering like a coward, upon the brink of adventure,
under pretence of deliberation; and therefore, having
first carefully stopped my ears and shut my eyes, I threw myself
headlong over the precipice. Behold the result! If I have
not brought up the pearls, I can say at least that I have been
to the bottom—and I might have added—of the human heart
sometimes—but for the perverse and foolish insincerity of the
world, which if I had so finished the sentence, would have set
their faces forever against my book; although that same world,
had I been wise enough—no, not wise enough but cunning
enough, to hold my peace, might have been ready to acknowledge
that I had been sometimes, even where I say—to the very
bottom of the human heart.

I plunged. But when I did, it was rather to relieve my own
soul from the intolerable weight of her own reproach, than
with any hope of living to complete the design, except at a sacrifice
next in degree to that of self-immolation. Would you
know what more than any other thing—more than all other
things determined me at last? I was an American. I had
heard the insolent question of a Scotch Reviewer, repeated on

every side of me by native Americans—“Who reads an American
Book?” I could not bear this—I could neither eat nor
sleep till my mind was made up. I reasoned with myself—I
strove hard—but the spirit within me would not be rebuked.
Shall I go forth said I, in the solitude of my own thought, and
make war alone against the foe—for alone it must he made, or
there will be no hope of success. There must be but one
head, one heart in the plan—the secret must not even be guessed
at by another—it must be single and simple, one that like
the wedge in mechanics, or in the ancient military art, must
have but one point, and that point must be of adamant. Being
so it may be turned aside: A thousand more like itself, may
be blunted or shivered; but if at last, any one of the whole
should make any impression whatever upon the foe, or effect
any entrance whatever into the sanctity and strength of his tremendous
phalanx, then, from that moment, the day is our own.
Our literature will begin to wake up, and our pride of country
will wake up with it. Those who follow will have nothing to
do but keep what the folorn hope, who goes to irretrievable
martyrdom if he fail, has gained.

Moreover—who was there to stand by the native American
that should go out, haply with a sling and a stone, against a
tower of strength and the everlasting entrenchments of prejudice?
Could he hope to find so much as one of his countrymen,
to go with him or even to bear his shield? Would the
Reviewers of America befriend him? No—they have not
courage enough to fight their own battles manfully.(1) No—they
would rather flatter than strike. They negociate altogether too
much—where blows are wanted, they give words. And the best
of our literary champions, would they? No; they would only
bewail his temerity, if he were the bold headlong creature he
should be to accomplish the work; and pity his folly and presumption,
if he were any thing else.

After all however, why should they be reproached for this?
They have gained their little reputation hardly. “It were too
much to spend that little”—so grudgingly acquiesced in by
their beloved countrymen—“rashly.” No wonder they fight shy.

It is their duty—considering what they have at stake—their
little all. There is Washington Irving now; he has obtained
the reputation of being—what?—why at the best, of being only
the American Addison, in the view of Englishmen. And is
this a title to care much for? Would such a name, though
Addison stood far higher in the opinion of the English themselves,
than he now does, or ever again will, be enough to
satisfy the ambition of a lofty-minded, original thinker?
Would such a man falter and reef his plumage midway up the
altitude of his blinding and brave ascent, to be called the
American Addison, or even what in my view were ten thousand
times better, the American Goldsmith.(2) No—up to
the very key stone of the broad blue firmament! he would
say, or back to the vile earth again: ay, lower than the earth
first! Understand me however. I do not say this lightly
nor disparagingly. I love and admire Washington Irving. I
wish him all the reputation he covets, and of the very kind he
covets. Our paths never did, never will cross each other.
And so with Mr. Cooper; and a multitude more, of whom we
may rightfully be proud. They have gained just enough popular
favor to make them afraid of hazarding one jot or tittle of
it, by stepping aside into a new path. No one of these could
avail me in my design. They would have everything to lose,
and nothing to gain by embarking in it. While I—what had I to
lose—nay what have I to lose? I am not now, I never have
been, I never shall be an author by trade. The opinion of the
public is not the breath of life to me; for if the truth must be
told, I have to this hour very little respect for it—so long as
it is indeed the opinion of the public—of the mere multitude,
the careless, unthinking judgment of the mob, unregulated by
the wise and thoughtful.

To succeed as I hoped, I must put everything at hazard. It
would not do for me to imitate anybody. Nor would it do
for my country. Who would care for the American Addison
where he could have the English by asking for it? Who would
languish, a twelvemonth after they appeared, for Mr. Cooper's
imitations of Sir Walter Scott, or Charles Brockden Brown's

imitations of Godwin? Those, and those only, who after
having seen the transfiguration of Raphael, (or that of Talma,)
or Dominichino's St. Jerome, would walk away to a village
painting-room, or a provincial theatre, to pick their teeth and
play the critic over an imitation of the one or a copy of the
other. At the best, all such things are but imitations. And
what are imitations? Sheer mimicry—more or less exalted
to be sure; but still mimicry—wherever the copies of life are
copied and not life itself: a sort of high-handed, noon-day
plagiarism—nothing more. People are never amazed, nor
carried away, nor uplifted by imitations. They are pleased
with the ingenuity of the artist—they are delighted with the
closeness of the imitation—but that is all. The better the
work is done, the worse they think of the workman. He who
can paint a great picture, cannot copy—David Teniers to the
contrary notwithstanding; for David never painted a great
picture in his life, though he has painted small ones, not more
than three feet square, which would sell for twenty-five thousand
dollars to day.

Yes—to succeed, I must imitate nobody—I must resemble nobody;
for with your critic, resemblance in the unknown to the
known, is never anything but adroit imitation. To succeed
therefore, I must be unlike all that have gone before me. That
were no easy matter; nor would be it so difficult as men are apt
to believe. Nor is it necessary that I should do better than all
who have gone before me. I should be more likely to prosper,
in the long run, by worse original productions—with a poor
story told in poor language, (if it were original in spirit and
character) than by a much better story told in much better language,
if after the transports of the public were over, they
should be able to trace a resemblance between it and Walter
Scott, or Oliver Goldsmith, or Mr. Addison.

So far so good. There was, beyond a doubt, a fair chance
in the great commonwealth of literature, even though I should
not achieve a miracle, nor prove myself both wiser and better
than all the authors who had gone before me. And moreover,
might it not be possible—possible I say—for the mob are a
jealous guardian of sepulchres and ashes, and high-sounding

names, particularly where a name will save them the trouble of
judging for themselves, or do their arguments for them in the
shape of a perpetual demonstration, whatever may be the nature
of the controversy in which they are involved—might it
not be possible then, I say, that, as the whole body of mankind
have been growing wiser and wiser, and better and better,
since the day when these great writers flourished, who are now
ruling “our spirits from their urns,” that authors may have
improved with them?—that they alone of the whole human
race, by some possibility, may not have remained altogether
stationary age after age—while the least enquiring and the
most indolent of human beings—the very multitude—have
been steadily advancing both in knowledge and power? And
if so, might it not be possible for some improvements to be
made, some discoveries, even yet in style and composition, by
lanching forth into space. True, we might not be certain of
finding a new world, like Columbus, nor a new heaven, like
Tyho Brahe; but we should probably encounter some phenomena
in the great unvisited moral sky and ocean; we should at
least find out, after a while—which would of itself be the next
greatest consolation for our trouble and anxiety, after that of
discovering a new world or a new system,—that there remained
no new world nor system to be discovered; that they who
should adventure after us, would have so much the less to do
for all that we had done; that they must follow in our steps;
that if our health and strength had been wasted in a prodigious
dream, it would have the good effect of preventing any future
waste of health and strength on the part of others in any similar
enterprize.

Islands and planets may still be found, we should say, and
they that find them, are welcome to them; but continents and
systems cannot be beyond where we have been; and if there
be any within it, why—they are neither continents nor systems.

But then, after all, there was one plain question to be asked,
which no honest man would like to evade, however much a
mere dreamer might wish to do so It was this. After all
my fine theory—what are my chances of success? And if successful,
what have I to gain? I chose to answer the last question

first. Gain!—of a truth, it were no easy matter to say.
Nothing here, nothing now—certainly nothing in America, till
my bones have been canonized; for my countrymen are a
thrifty, calculating people—they give nothing for the reputation
of a man, till they are sure of selling it for more than they give.
Were they visited by saints and prophets instead of gifted men,
they would never believe that they were either saints or prophets,
till they had been starved to death—or lived by a miracle
—by no visible means; or until their cast-off clothes, bones,
hair and teeth, or the furniture of the houses wherein they were
starved, or the trees under which they had been chilled to death,
carved into snuff-boxes or walking-sticks, would sell for as
much as that sympathy had cost them, or as much as it would
come to, to build a monument over—I do not say over their unsheltered
remains, for by that time there would be but little or
no remains of them to be found, unmingled with the sky and
water, earth and air about them, save perhaps in here and there
a museum or college where they might always be bought up,
however, immortality and all—for something more than compound
interest added to the original cost—but to build a monument
or a shed over the unappropriated stock, with certain
privileges to the manufacturer of the walking-sticks and snuff-boxes
aforesaid, so long as any of the material remained; taking
care to provide with all due solemnity, perhaps by an act
of the legislature, for securing the monopoly to the sovereign
state itself.

Thus much perhaps I might hope for from my own people.
But what from the British? They were magnanimous, or at
least they would bear to be told so; and telling them so in a
simple, off-hand, ingenuous way, with a great appearance of
sincerity, and as if one had been carried away by a sudden impulse,
to speak a forbidden truth, or surprised into a prohibited
expression of feeling by some spectacle of generosity, in
spite of his constitutional reserve and timidity and caution,
would be likely to pay well. But I would do no such thing.
I would flatter nobody—no people—no nation. I would lie to
nobody—neither to my own countrymen, nor to the British—

unless I were better paid for it, than any of my countrymen
were ever yet paid either at home or abroad.

No—I choose to see for myself, by putting the proof touch
like a hot iron to their foreheads, whether the British are indeed
a magnanimous people. But then, if I do all this, what
are my chances of reward, even with the British themselves?
That was a fearful question to be sure. The British are a nation
of writers. Their novel-writers are as a cloud. True—
true—but they still want something which they have not.
They want a real American writer—one with courage enough
to write in his native tongue. That they have not, even at
this day. That they never had. Our best writers are English
writers, not American writers. They are English in every
thing they do, and in every thing they say, as authors—in the
structure and moral of their stories, in their dialogue, speech
and pronunciation, yea in the very characters they draw. Not
so much as one true Yankee is to be found in any of our native
books: hardly so much as one true Yankee phrase. Not
so much as one true Indian, though you hardly take up a story
on either side of the water now, without finding a red-man
stowed away in it; and what sort of a red-man? Why one
that uniformly talks the best English the author is capable of
—more than half the time perhaps out-Ossianing Ossian.

I have the modesty to believe that in some things I am unlike
all the other writers of my country—both living and dead;
although there are not a few, I dare say who would be glad to
hear of my bearing a great resemblance to the latter. For
my own part I do not pretend to write English—that is, I do
not pretend to write what the English themselves call English
—I do not, and I hope to God—I say this reverently, although
one of their Reviewers may be again puzzled to determine
“whether I am swearing or praying” when I say so—that I never
shall write what is now worshipped under the name of classical
English. It is no natural language—it never was— it never
will be spoken alive on this earth: and therefore, ought never
to be written. We have dead languages enough now; but the
deadest language I ever met with or heard of, was that in use
among the writers of Queen Anne's day.

At last I came to the conclusion—that the chances were at
least a thousand to one against me. A thousand to one said I,
to myself, that I perish outright in my headlong enterprise.
But then, if I do not perish—if I triumph, what a triumph it
will be! If I succeed, I shall be rewarded well—if the British
are what they are believed to be—in fair proportion to the toil
and peril I have encountered. At any rate, whether I fail or
not, I shall be, and am willing to be, one of the first hundred to
carry the war into the very camp, yea among the very household
gods of the enemy. And if I die, I will die with my right
arm consuming in the blaze of their altars—like Mutius Scæ
vola.

But enough on this head. The plan took shape, and you
have the commencement now before you, reader. I have had
several objects in view at the same time, all subordinate however
to that which I first mentioned, in the prosecution of my
wayward enterprise. One was to show to my countrymen that
there are abundant and hidden sources of fertility in their own
beautiful brave earth, waiting only to be broken up; and barren
places to all outward appearance, in the northern, as well
as the southern Americas—yet teeming below with bright
sail—where the plough-share that is driven through them
with a strong arm, will come out laden with rich mineral and
followed by running water: places where—if you but lay your
ear to the scented ground, you may hear the perpetual gush of
innumerable fountains pouring their subterranean melody
night and day among the minerals and rocks, the iron and the
gold: places where the way-faring man, the pilgrim or the
wanderer through what he may deem the very deserts of literature,
the barren-places of knowledge, will find the very roots
of the withered and blasted shrubbery, which like the traveller
in Peru, he may have accidentally uptorn in his weary and discouraging
ascent, and the very bowels of the earth into which
he has torn his way, heavy with a brightness that may be coined,
like the soil about the favorite hiding places of the sunny-haired
Apollo.

Another, was to teach my countrymen, that these very Englishmen,
to whom as the barbarians of ancient story did by

their gods when they would conciliate them, we are accustomed
to offer up our own offspring, with our own hands, whenever
we see the sky darkening over the water—the sky inhabited
of them; ay, that these very Englishmen, to whom we are
so in the habit of immolating all that is beautiful and grand
among us—the first born of our youth—our creatures of immortality—our
men of genius, while in the fever and flush of
their vanity, innocence and passion—ere they have had time
to put out their first plumage to the sky and the wind, all
above and about them—that they, these very Englishmen,
would not love us the less, nor revere us the less, if we loved
and revered ourselves, and the issue of our blood and breath,
and vitality and power, a little more. No—the men of England
are men. They love manhood. They may smile at our
national vanity, but their smile would be one of compassionate
benevolence and encouragement, if we were wise enough to
keep our young at home, till their first molting season were
well over—and then, offer to pair them, even though there
would be a little presumption in it, high up in the skies, and the
strong wind—with their bravest and best: not, as we do now,
upon the altars of the earth—upon the tables of our moneychangers—half
fledged and untrained—with their legs tied,
and wings clipped; or, peradventure, with necks turned, and
heads all skewered under their tails—a heap of carrion and
garbage that the braver birds, even among their enemies,
would disdain to stoop at. Such would be their behavior, if we
dealt as we ought with our own; there would be no pity nor disdain
with them. They would cheer us to the conflict—pour their
red wine down our throats if we were beaten; and if their
birds were beaten, they would bear it with temper—knowing
that their reputation could well afford an occasional trumph,
to the young of their favorite brood. The men of England are
waiting to do us justice: but there is a certain formality to be
gone through with, before they will do it. We must claim it.
And why should we not? I do not mean that we should claim
it upon our knees as the condemned of their courts of justice
are compelled to claim that mercy, which the very law itself,
has predetermined to grant to him—but will not, unless
that idle and unworthy formality has been submitted to; no—
I mean no such thing. We do not want mercy: and I would
have my countrymen, when they are arraigned before any mere
English tribunal—not acting under the law of nations in the
world of literature, to go at once, with a calm front and untroubled
eye, and plead to their jurisdiction, with a loud clear
voice, and with their right hand upon the great book of English
law, and set them at defiance. This, they have the right,
and the power to do; and why should they not, when some of
the inferior courts, of mere English criticism, have the audacity
at every little interval, to call upon a sovereign people,
to plead before them—without counsel—and be tried for some
infringement of some paltry municipal provision of their statute
book—some provincialism of language—or some heresy
in politics—or some plagiarism of manner or style; and
abide the penalty of forgery—or of ecclesiastical censure—or
the reward of petit-larceny; re-transportation—or re-banishment
to America.

It is high time now, that we should begin to do each other
justice. Let us profit by their good qualities; and let them, by
ours. And in time, we shall assuredly come to feel like
brothers of the same parentage—an elder and a younger—different
in temper—but alike in family resemblance—and alike
proud of our great ancestry, the English giants of olden time.
We shall revere our brother; and he will love his. But when
shall this be?—not, I am sorely afraid—till we have called
home all our children, from the four corners of the earth;
from the east and from the west; from the north and from the
south—and held a congress of the dead—of their fathers, and
of our fathers—and published to the world, and to posterity—
appealing again to Jehovah for the rectitude of our intentions
—another Declaration of Independence, in the great Republic
of Letters. And, yet this may soon be. The time
is even now at hand. Our representatives are assembling:
the dead Greek, and the Roman; the ancient English, and
the fathers of literature, from all the buried nations of all the
earth, and holding counsel together, and choosing their delegates.
And the generation is already born, that shall yet hear

the heavens ringing with acclamations to their decree—that
another state has been added to the everlasting confederacy of
literature!

And now the author repeats to the people of America, one
and all, farewell; assuring them that there is very little probability
of his ever appearing before them again as a novel-writer.
His object has been, if not wholly, at least in a great
degree accomplished. He has demonstrated that a bold and
direct appeal to the manhood of any people will never be made
in vain. Others may have been already, or may hereafter
be incited to a more intrepid movement; and to a more confident
reliance upon themselves and their resources, by what
he has now accomplished—where it is most difficult to accomplish
any thing—among his own countrymen: and most
devoutly does he pray, that if they should, they may be more
fortunate, and far more generously rewarded, than he has ever
been; and if they should not, he advises them to go where
he has been already—and trust to another people for that, which
his own have not the heart to give him, however well he may
deserve it. Abroad—if he do not get a chaplet of fire and
greenness—he will, at least, get a cup of cold water,—and it
may be, a tear or two of compassion, if nothing of encouragement—whatever
he may do. At home—he may wear himself
out—like one ashamed of what he is doing, in secrecy and
darkness—exhaust his own heart of all its power and vitality,
by pouring himself into the hearts of others—with a certainty
that he will be called a madman, a beggar and a fool, for his
pains—unless he persevere, in spite of a broken heart, and a
broken constitution, till he shall have made his own countrymen
ashamed of themselves, and afraid of him.

It is a sad thing to say good by`e, even for an author. If you
mean what you say—it is a prayer as well as a blessing, an
audible breathing of the heart. And if you do not—it is a wicked
profanation. So far, reader, you have been the familiar
companion of the author; and you may be one of those, who
have journied with him before, for many a weary day, through
much of his wandering and meditation:—that is, you may be
one of those who, having been admitted before, to touch his

heart with a naked hand—have felt in one pulsation—in one
single hour's fellowship with it, all that he had felt and thought
for many a weary year. You have been with him to a more
holy place than the fire-side; to him, more like the invisible
creatures—for he hath never seen your face, and peradventure
never may, though you have been looking into his very soul—
that hover about the chamber of prayer—the solitude of the poet
—or the haunted place under the shadow of great trees, where
the wearied man throws himself down, to muse upon the face
of his Creator, which he sees in the sky over him, or beneath
the vast blue water before him. Is it wonderful therefore that
there should be a little seriousness about his brow—although ye
are invisible to him—when he is about to say farewell to you—
farewell forever—without having once heard the tone of your
voice—nor one of the many tears, that you may have dropped
over him, when you thought yourself altogether alone:—

Nor can he look back, without some emotion, upon the labour
that he has undergone, even within that flowery wilderness,
where he hath been journeying with you, or lying and ruminating
all alone, for so long a time; and out of which, he is now
about to emerge—forever—with a strong tread, to the broad
blue sky and the solid earth; nor without lamenting that he
cannot go barefooted—and half-naked among men;—and that
the colour and perfume—the dim enchantment, and the sweet,
breathing, solemn loneliness of the wild-wood path, that he is
about to abandon, for the broad dusty highway of the world,
are so unpropitious to the substantial reputation of a man: nor,
without grieving that the blossom-leaves, and the golden
flower-dust, which now cover him, from head to foot, must be
speedily brushed away;—and that the scent of the wilderness
may not go with him—wherever he may go—wandering through
the habitation of princes—the courts of the living God—or,
the dwelling places of ambition—yea, even into the grave.

I have but one other request to make. Let these words be
engraven hereafter on my tomb-stone: “Who reads an
American Book?”

(1) Or had not before this was written. Look to the North-American Review
before 1825, for proof.

(2) I speak here of Goldsmith's prose, not of his poetry. Heaven forbid!