Page:Ainsworth's Magazine - Volume 1.djvu/11



PROLOGUES have gone out of fashion with perukes, and epilogues have followed them out with pigtails; but an address to the town at the opening of a Magazine is still as regularly looked for as a speech from the throne at the opening of a session.

There is, however, this difference; that as, in the one case, expectation is never disappointed because it is never raised, since nothing is ever communicated; so in the other, expectation is often excited beyond a reasonable pitch, since too much is generally communicated, and promises are made without a chance of their fulfillment.

To adopt the rule that prescribes an address, is not to adopt the rule of faithlessness in the engagements it may contain. But in introducing to the public, he whose name it bears pledges himself only upon one point—that at the end of the many volumes yet unformed, to which he confidently anticipates his new venture will extend, nobody shall be able to convict him of breaking a single promise; for he does not intend to make one.

In the construction of a prospectus, promises are looked upon rather as literary conveniences than moral obligations; and a pledge to present greater excellence at a lower cost, frequently implies nothing more than the rounding of a sentence, or the needful supply of matter. “The address looks rather short,” said the writer of such a performance, on starting a new periodical. “Add some more promises,” observed the conscientious proprietor of the work. In such a dilemma, a simple pledge to be profusely witty, to work a revolution