Anonymous

Adventures of a Quire of Paper [from the London Magazine]

London

August, September, and October, 1779

"Thus it happened with me on the present occasion; and I found my ideas suddenly drawn from the sermon in my hand and (in their vagabond way) hurrying over the birth, parentage, education, and situation of the reverend penman."

[...] Now it is natural enough while we read any composition, to turn our thoughts (especially on reading a passage that strikes us forcibly in any light) towards its author; and if known either by person, history or report, to advert to many things respecting his life, fortunes, and character. Thus it happened with me on the present occasion; and I found my ideas suddenly drawn from the sermon in my hand and (in their vagabond way) hurrying over the birth, parentage, education, and situation of the reverend penman. At once, however, they made a full stop in their career, when the still small voice within, laid this question as a stumbling block in the way. And so -- is reposing in the softest, best embraces of the holy Church, while I am still laboring as a country curate on three shillings a day? And, all things considered, why, in God's name, should not I have been raised to this exalted state of dignity, and ease, and have still wielded, what he wielded so well, the birchen sceptre of the pedagogue, and continued to frown in peril and dismay through every trembling class? How unaccountable, how unequal is the distribution of things here! [...]
(IV, p. 25)

Population::Vagabonds Motion::Hurrying

Reading

Published in three parts in the London Magazine or Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer, 48 (August 1779), pp. 355-8, (September 1779), pp. 395-8, and (October 1779), pp. 448-52. Reprinted in Edinburgh Weekly Magazine (1779) and Dublin's Gentleman's and London Magazine (1779).

Text from British It-Narratives, 1750-1830, vol. 4, ed. Mark Blackwell (Pickering and Chatto, 2012).

08/31/2013