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Page 43
He did not fail catchising his young friend on this occasion. He
said he was sorry to see any of his gang guilty of a breach of
honour; that without honour PRIGGERY was at an end; that if a prig
had but honour he would overlook every vice in the world. "But,
nevertheless," said he, "I will forgive you this time, as you are
a hopeful lad, and I hope never afterwards to find you delinquent
in this great point."
Wild had now brought his gang to great regularity: he was obeyed
and feared by them all. He had likewise established an office,
where all men who were robbed, paying the value only (or a little
more) of their goods, might have them again. This was of notable
use to several persons who had lost pieces of plate they had
received from their grand-mothers; to others who had a particular
value for certain rings, watches, heads of canes, snuff-boxes,
&c., for which they would not have taken twenty times as much as
they were worth, either because they had them a little while or a
long time, or that somebody else had had them before, or from some
other such excellent reason, which often stamps a greater value on
a toy than the great Bubble-boy himself would have the impudence
to set upon it.
By these means he seemed in so promising a way of procuring a
fortune, and was regarded in so thriving a light by all the
gentlemen of his acquaintance, as by the keeper and turnkeys of
Newgate, by Mr. Snap, and others of his occupation, that Mr. Snap
one day, taking Mr. Wild the elder aside, very seriously proposed
what they had often lightly talked over, a strict union between
their families, by marrying his daughter Tishy to our hero. This
proposal was very readily accepted by the old gentleman, who
promised to acquaint his son with it.
On the morrow on which this message was delivered, our hero,
little dreaming of the happiness which, of its own accord, was
advancing so near towards him, had called Fireblood to him; and,
after informing that youth of the violence of his passion for the
young lady, and assuring him what confidence he reposed in him and
his honour, he despatched him to Miss Tishy with the following
letter; which we here insert, not only as we take it to be
extremely curious, but to be a much better pattern for that
epistolary kind of writing which is generally called love-letters
than any to be found in the academy of compliments, and which we
challenge all the beaus of our time to excel either in matter or
spelling.
"MOST DIVINE and ADWHORABLE CREETURE,--I doubt not but those IIs,
briter than the son, which have kindled such a flam in my hart,
have likewise the faculty of seeing it. It would be the hiest
preassumption to imagin you eggnorant of my loav. No, madam, I
sollemly purtest, that of all the butys in the unaversal glob,
there is none kapable of hateracting my IIs like you. Corts and
pallaces would be to me deserts without your kumpany, and with it
a wilderness would have more charms than haven itself. For I hop
you will beleve me when I sware every place in the univarse is a
haven with you. I am konvinced you must be sinsibel of my violent
passion for you, which, if I endevored to hid it, would be as
impossible as for you, or the son, to hid your buty's. I assure
you I have not slept a wink since I had the hapness of seeing you
last; therefore hop you will, out of Kumpassion, let me have the
honour of seeing you this afternune; for I am, with the greatest
adwhoration,
"Most deivine creeture, Iour most passionate amirer, Adwhorer, and
slave, JONATHAN WYLD."
If the spelling of this letter be not so strictly orthographical,
the reader will be pleased to remember that such a defect might be
worthy of censure in a low and scholastic character, but can be no
blemish in that sublime greatness of which we endeavour to raise a
complete idea in this history. In which kind of composition
spelling, or indeed any kind of human literature, hath never been
thought a necessary ingredient; for if these sort of great
personages can but complot and contrive their noble schemes, and
hack and hew mankind sufficiently, there will never be wanting fit
and able persons who can spell to record their praises. Again, if
it should be observed that the stile of this letter doth not
exactly correspond with that of our hero's speeches, which we have
here recorded, we answer, it is sufficient if in these the
historian adheres faithfully to the matter, though he embellishes
the diction with some flourishes of his own eloquence, without
which the excellent speeches recorded in antient historians
(particularly in Sallust) would have scarce been found in their
writings. Nay, even amongst the moderns, famous as they are for
elocution, it may be doubted whether those inimitable harangues
published in the monthly magazines came literally from the mouths
of the HURGOS, &c., as they are there inserted, or whether we may
not rather suppose one historian of great eloquence hath borrowed
the matter only, and adorned it with those rhetorical showers for
which many of the said HURGOS are not so extremely eminent.
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