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- 11081
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- II.
These were stirring letters. The Library Form! an Illustrated Edition!
His whole heart swelled.
But unfortunately it occurred to Pierre, that as all his writings were
not only fugitive, but if put together could not possibly fill more than
a very small duodecimo; therefore the Library Edition seemed a little
premature, perhaps; possibly, in a slight degree, preposterous. Then, as
they were chiefly made up of little sonnets, brief meditative poems, and
moral essays, the matter for the designer ran some small risk of being
but meager. In his inexperience, he did not know that such was the great
height of invention to which the designer's art had been carried, that
certain gentlemen of that profession had gone to an eminent
publishing-house with overtures for an illustrated edition of "Coke upon
Lyttleton." Even the City Directory was beautifully illustrated with
exquisite engravings of bricks, tongs, and flat-irons.
Concerning the draught for the title-page, it must be confessed, that on
seeing the imposing enumeration of his titles--long and magnificent as
those preceding the proclamations of some German Prince ("_Hereditary
Lord of the back-yard of Crantz Jacobi; Undoubted Proprietor by Seizure
of the bedstead of the late Widow Van Lorn; Heir Apparent to the
Bankrupt Bakery of Fletz and Flitz; Residuary Legatee of the Confiscated
Pin-Money of the Late Dowager Dunker; &c. &c. &c._") Pierre could not
entirely repress a momentary feeling of elation. Yet did he also bow low
under the weight of his own ponderosity, as the author of such a vast
load of literature. It occasioned him some slight misgivings, however,
when he considered, that already in his eighteenth year, his title-page
should so immensely surpass in voluminous statisticals the simple page,
which in his father's edition prefixed the vast speculations of Plato.
Still, he comforted himself with the thought, that as he could not
presume to interfere with the bill-stickers of the Gazelle Magazine, who
every month covered the walls of the city with gigantic announcements of
his name among the other contributors; so neither could he now--in the
highly improbable event of closing with the offer of Messrs. Wonder and
Wen--presume to interfere with the bill-sticking department of their
business concern; for it was plain that they esteemed one's title-page
but another unwindowed wall, infinitely more available than most walls,
since here was at least one spot in the city where no rival
bill-stickers dared to encroach. Nevertheless, resolved as he was to let
all such bill-sticking matters take care of themselves, he was sensible
of some coy inclination toward that modest method of certain kid-gloved
and dainty authors, who scorning the vulgarity of a sounding parade,
contented themselves with simply subscribing their name to the
title-page; as confident, that that was sufficient guarantee to the
notice of all true gentlemen of taste. It was for petty German princes
to sound their prolonged titular flourishes. The Czar of Russia
contented himself with putting the simple word "NICHOLAS" to his
loftiest decrees.
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