proprietors of the paper, "in consequence," said my friend
the editor, in a note which he kindly attached to the pamphlet which
they formed, "of the interest they had excited in the northern
counties."[13] Their modicum of success, lowly as was their subject,
compared with that of some of my more ambitious verses, taught me my
proper course. Let it be my business, I said, to know what is not
generally known;--let me qualify myself to stand as an interpreter
between nature and the public: while I strive to narrate as pleasingly
and describe as vividly as I can, let truth, not fiction, be my walk;
and if I succeed in uniting the novel to the true, in provinces of more
general interest than the very humble one in which I have now partially
succeeded, I shall succeed also in establishing myself in a position
which, if not lofty, will yield me at least more solid footing than that
to which I might attain as a mere _litterateur_ who, mayhap, pleased for
a little, but added nothing to the general fund. The resolution was, I
think, a good one; would that it had been better kept! The following
extracts may serve to show that, humble as my new subject may be deemed,
it gave considerable scope for description of a kind not often
associated with herrings, even when they employed all Grub Street:--

"As the night gradually darkened, the sky assumed a dead and leaden
hue: the sea, roughened by the rising breeze, reflected its deeper
hues with an intensity approaching to black, and seemed a dark
uneven pavement, that absorbed every ray of the remaining light. A
calm silvery patch, some fifteen or twenty yards in extent, came
moving slowly through the black. It seemed merely a patch of water
coated with oil; but, obedient to some other moving power than that
of either tide or wind, it sailed aslant our line of buoys, a
stone-cast from our bows--lengthened itself along the line to
thrice its former extent--paused as if for a moment--and then three
of the buoys, after erecting themselves on their narrower base,
with a sudden jerk slowly sank. 'One--two--three buoys!' exclaimed
one of the fishermen, reckoning them as they disappeared;--'_there_
are ten barrels for us secure.' A few moments were suffered to
elapse: and then, unfixing the haulser from the stem, and bringing
it aft to the stern, we commenced hauling. The nets approached the
gunwale. The fi