Chronicles of the Canongate | Page 4

necessity
connected him deeply and extensively with the pecuniary transactions
of that profession. In a word, almost without one note of premonition, I
found myself involved in the sweeping catastrophe of the unhappy time,
and called on to meet the demands of creditors upon commercial
establishments with which my fortunes had long been bound up, to the
extent of no less a sum than one hundred and twenty thousand pounds.
The author having, however rashly, committed his pledges thus largely
to the hazards of trading companies, it behoved him, of course, to abide
the consequences of his conduct, and, with whatever feelings, he
surrendered on the instant every shred of property which he had been
accustomed to call his own. It became vested in the hands of gentlemen
whose integrity, prudence, and intelligence were combined with all
possible liberality and kindness of disposition, and who readily
afforded every assistance towards the execution of plans, in the success
of which the author contemplated the possibility of his ultimate
extrication, and which were of such a nature that, had assistance of this
sort been withheld, he could have had little prospect of carrying them
into effect. Among other resources which occurred was the project of
that complete and corrected edition of his Novels and Romances
(whose real parentage had of necessity been disclosed at the moment of
the commercial convulsions alluded to), which has now advanced with
unprecedented favour nearly to its close; but as he purposed also to
continue, for the behoof of those to whom he was indebted, the exercise

of his pen in the same path of literature, so long as the taste of his
countrymen should seem to approve of his efforts, it appeared to him
that it would have been an idle piece of affectation to attempt getting
up a new incognito, after his original visor had been thus dashed from
his brow. Hence the personal narrative prefixed to the first work of
fiction which he put forth after the paternity of the "Waverley Novels"
had come to be publicly ascertained; and though many of the
particulars originally avowed in that Notice have been unavoidably
adverted to in the Prefaces and Notes to some of the preceding volumes
of the present collection, it is now reprinted as it stood at the time,
because some interest is generally attached to a coin or medal struck on
a special occasion, as expressing, perhaps, more faithfully than the
same artist could have afterwards conveyed, the feelings of the moment
that gave it birth. The Introduction to the first series of Chronicles of
the Canongate ran, then, in these words:--
INTRODUCTION.
All who are acquainted with the early history of the Italian stage are
aware that Arlecchino is not, in his original conception, a mere worker
of marvels with his wooden sword, a jumper in and out of windows, as
upon our theatre, but, as his party-coloured jacket implies, a buffoon or
clown, whose mouth, far from being eternally closed, as amongst us, is
filled, like that of Touchstone, with quips, and cranks, and witty
devices, very often delivered extempore. It is not easy to trace how he
became possessed of his black vizard, which was anciently made in the
resemblance of the face of a cat; but it seems that the mask was
essential to the performance of the character, as will appear from the
following theatrical anecdote:--
An actor on the Italian stage permitted at the Foire du St. Germain, in
Paris, was renowned for the wild, venturous, and extravagant wit, the
brilliant sallies and fortunate repartees, with which he prodigally
seasoned the character of the party- coloured jester. Some critics,
whose good-will towards a favourite performer was stronger than their
judgment, took occasion to remonstrate with the successful actor on the
subject of the grotesque vizard. They went wilily to their purpose,
observing that his classical and Attic wit, his delicate vein of humour,
his happy turn for dialogue, were rendered burlesque and ludicrous by
this unmeaning and bizarre disguise, and that those attributes would

become far more impressive if aided by the spirit of his eye and the
expression of his natural features. The actor's vanity was easily so far
engaged as to induce him to make the experiment. He played Harlequin
barefaced, but was considered on all hands as having made a total
failure. He had lost the audacity which a sense of incognito bestowed,
and with it all the reckless play of raillery which gave vivacity to his
original acting. He cursed his advisers, and resumed his grotesque
vizard, but, it is said, without ever being able to regain the careless and
successful levity which the consciousness of the disguise had formerly
bestowed.
Perhaps the Author of Waverley is now about to incur a risk of the