Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/330

290 290 HENRY COLE URN. hailed as a true successor to Smollett. This was followed by a rapid succession of sea stories, among the best of which undoubtedly are "Peter Simple" and "Midshipman Easy." The perusal of these works has probably done more to turn youthful as- piration and energies to the choice of a profession than any series of formal injunctions ever penned. Old King William, the Sailor-King, was so entranced with "Peter Simple" that he begged to be introduced to the author, and promised to bestow some honoura- ble distinction upon him for his services ; but after- wards recollecting suddenly that he "had written a book against the impressment of seamen," he refused to fulfil his pledge. When, later on, Colburn pub- lished Marryat's "Diary in America," the Yankees felt terribly outraged, and the severe criticism that followed speedily emptied his shelves of a large edition. This was emphatically the period of fashionable novels, and the great outside world was perpetually calling out for more and more romantic accounts of that attractive region to which middle-class thought could only aspire in reverent fancy. And though these novels seemed written primarily to illustrate the moral lesson of Touchstone to the Shepherd " Shepherd, wert thou ever at court ?" "No." "Then thou art damned" the public received the oracle, not only with humility, but thankfulness. For a time Mr. Bulwer Lytton was a disciple of this fashionable school, but even " Pelham" has an interest greater than any other specimen of its class, for though, in some degree, an illustration of the maxim that " man- ners make the man," the threads of a darker and more tragic interest are interwoven with the tale. As an