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 state 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.
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