Robinson,"
without any editor whatsoever.

On this head I was determined to be firm. What! after preparing, and
correcting, and publishing such thousands of advertisements in prose
and verse and in every form of which the language is susceptible,
to be told that I couldn't write English! It was Jones all over.
If there is a party envious of the genius of another party in this
sublunary world that party is our Mr. Jones.

But I was again softened by a touching appeal from our senior
partner. Mr. Brown, though prosaic enough in his general ideas, was
still sometimes given to the Muses; and now, with a melancholy and
tender cadence, he quoted the following lines;--

"Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For 'tis their nature to.
But 'tis a shameful sight to see, when partners of one firm
like we,
Fall out, and chide, and fight!"

So I gave in again.

It was then arranged that one of Smith and Elder's young men should
look through the manuscript, and make any few alterations which the
taste of the public might require. It might be that the sonorous,
and, if I may so express myself, magniloquent phraseology in which
I was accustomed to invite the attention of the nobility and gentry
to our last importations was not suited for the purposes of light
literature, such as this. "In fiction, Mr. Robinson, your own unaided
talents would doubtless make you great," said to me the editor of
this Magazine; "but if I may be allowed an opinion, I do think that
in the delicate task of composing memoirs a little assistance may
perhaps be not inexpedient."

This was prettily worded; so what with this, and what with our Mr.
Brown's poetry, I gave way; but I reserved to myself the right of an
epistolary preface in my own name. So here it is.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--I am not a bit ashamed of my part in the
following transaction. I have done what little in me lay to further
British commerce. British commerce is not now what it was. It is
becoming open and free like everything else that is British;--open
to the poor man as well as to the rich. That bugbear Capital is a
crumbling old tower, and is pretty nigh brought to its last ruin.
Credit is the polished shaft of the temple on which the new world
of trade will be content to lean. That, I take it, is the one great
doctrine of modern commerce. Credit,--credit,--credit. Get credit,
and capital will follow. Doesn't the word speak for itself? Must not
credit b