New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1854-06-08
Editorial Correspondence.

moderate specimen, is by many supposed to
be an invention Of modern impertinence. Not a
few. therefore, regarding it as bore, skip it;
or if they read it all read, as it susually writ
ten, last Of all Yet prefaoes are but apologies;
and what book but has need of one, in sign of
the authors modesty' A man should not rush
upon his readers, without some attempt to make
fair weather with them and caiole them at the
outset. Nothing has greater need than book
to ask indulgence ; and all subjects require
either for themselves or for him who is to treat
of them, some preliminary explanations, me
least one can do is to make o self-introduetory
reverence to his auditory A bow is the neces-
sary preface to entering ballroom a shake OF
the hands is the preface to boxing match;
i sword salute that to a duel; an oath to the
giving of ones testimony proclamation Eek
sept among flibusters) to the going to war. We
court and We kiss--very pleasant prefaces--be-
1 fore we marry; we quarrel--a scurvy preface
| before we fight. A noble edifce has its preface
portico an opera, its overture play, its
prologue; an orchestra, its tuning up; which,
even at the Orleans, in spite of the accomplished
Boudousquie and Davis and maugre all Prevost's
SAiAA, 40 oS e'iodSiSOdpiO plSluSo do hhy eiiit
ever was written. Nay, Governments them
selves have, where meaning to be good, their
prefaces for what else is Constitution Tits
but the prologue, not the play. We're both ever
| so good, bad actors might murder them. The
present paltry Administration had its appro-
pirate preface Of high sounding pretences, the
Baltimore Platform which is very like grand
portico, to conduct you into howell.
Thus you see that prefaces are in the very
nature of things. And, accordingly, the An
clients themselves--those models Of taste to whom
] just now indirectly referred-were no stran-
gers to the practice they often used the pre-
4 face; taking care only to keep it within due
| proportion to the dignity Of the work. Homer
opens the Had by announcing that he is about
to sing, with the Muses. heavenly assistance, the
wrath Of Pelides and the woes which it brought
4 upon Greece: Virgil begins the Kneid by q like
| intimation of what he is to relate arms and
the man." both declare their subject and in
woke the tuneful Nine: SO that the great bards
Of yore did just as we do nowadays, except that
| they bespoke, by their prefaces, the favor OF
| the Gods, where we, rather less piously, try te
propitiate the reader, as far more likely to buy
our books. The father of prose narrative, He
rodotus, sets out with what is real preface, il
4 which he succinctly tells who he is and what hi
is going to write about His yet greater follow
, er, Thucydides, does the same; letting us know
by way Of Advertisement, what pains he hac
taken to arrive at the truth Of the events which
he relates. Such are the great antique authori
ties in behalf of prefaees. They render needles
any resort to modern instances, unless it be tina
of the least degenerate Of moderns, Milton
whose brief proem to the Paradise Lost is moth
ing but very solemn preface.
\ Having thus cleared the way of all difficulties
we will, if if it so please you, proceed upon ou
voyage, or Gas it may prove to be) our vagary
j Like Cimon of old, who, in one day, triumpher
both as an admiral and q general, am about t
try my fortune both by water and on land; o
as the great Blake, who after much bulletins
with the Irish and others on shore, suddenl,
became one of the chetest of naval heroes.
Smile not at the thought of my talking as
had launched forth upon the great deep.
have high authority for doing so. When Mr.
Calhoun wanted to shift about for Western popu
larity and to get over his own doctrines of strie
construction, he pronounced the Mississippi tt
be a true sea. You yourselves speak always o
its shores, far above and below you, as &C TIN
coast" 1t is, in short, our Mediterranean Sea
and though not just that briny affair which oil,
tars and the sea-songs have been raving about
from the Earl of Dorset's time down to Dibdin's
it is, in my conception, none the worse for that
For though have made not few voyages,
|
much better than salt to sail as it is to drink
Yet have read, while still boy, what has sen
many an honest lad to sea not Marryat AM
his compeers of piracy made romantic, bu
Drake and Damper and Cook and Byron an,
LaPeyrouse and Vancouver, and many NOR
that tell how brave tars have wrestled with tn
storm or fought the foe Such simple, sturdy
stirring old authors are, you know, dear reader
to the men of the waves, what the great poet
are to us landsmen; if one has in him drop {
the mariners blood, they kindle it up, as
trumpet does all the spirit that is in steet
Tuneless enough may such stories seem to u
that read verse and get soft sounds ashore: bu
to the rough ears of the sailor, nothing is s
sweet
had early read Homer, too; and certainl
' with no very great opinion of the naval tactic
of his hero, Achilles; who, in his attack on Troy
had SO nearly foundered and been swamped, i
the river Scamander, when he might have ia
len on in good barges, stoutly manned and eac
mounted with swivel, after the manner of tn
ornaments of that great sea-captain, Thomr
Jefferson, my couutryman, the inventor of Al
| stractions, of Freedom without sense or mora
or religion, of colleges without discipline,
: credit without honesty, Of wars without bloot
: shed and Of nayies without ship
Nor had / much more admired the voyages
Homer's other hero, or those of that pious mill
: sop, Virgirs Hneas. could not read the lor
g og-books in rhyme Of either, without ve1
hearty contempt for such spoony seamanshi
a Remember, for instance, how that notable nav
gator, Commodore Ulysses, got stranded ar
swamped, for want Of being cockswain enough
% steer through the straits of Messina, though
I good deal broader than the Mississippi: or no
Virgil's psalm-singing skipper, the Darda
Eneas, although by the mothers side sprur
IS from the sea, kept up such sorry discipline
= his deck, that one night the man at the wheel
y certain Jack or Bill Palinurus) actually fe
5 fast asleep, tumbled over the gunwale, and W,
(as he deserved to beg drowned-there beir
4