Men naturally take an interest in the adventures of every eminent writer.I will, therefore, gratify the laudable curiosity, which, on this occasion, will doubtless be universal, by pre fixing to my account of the poem a concise memoir of the poet.
Richard Quongti will be born at Westminster on the 1st of July, 2786.He will be the younger son of the younger branch of one of the most respectable families in England.He will be linearly descended from Quongti, the famous Chinese liberal, who, after the failure of the heroic attempt of his party to obtain a constitution from the Emperor Fim Fam, will take refuge in England, in the twenty-third century.Here his descendants will obtain considerable note; and one branch of the family will be raised to the peerage.
Richard, however, though destined to exalt his family to distinction far nobler than any which wealth or titles can bestow, will be born to a very scanty fortune.He will display in his early youth such striking talents as will attract the notice of Viscount Quongti, his third cousin, then secretary of state for the Steam Department.At the expense of this eminent nobleman, he will be sent to prosecute his studies at the university of Tombuctoo.To that illustrious seat of the muses all the ingenuous youth of every country will then be attracted by the high scientific character of Professor Quashaboo, and the eminent literary attainments of Professor Kissey Kickey.In spite of this formidable competition, however, Quongti will acquire the highest honours in every department of knowledge, and will obtain the esteem of his associates by his amiable and unaffected manners.The guardians of the young Duke of Carrington, premier peer of England, and the last remaining scion of the ancient and illustrious house of Smith, will be desirous to secure so able an instructor for their ward.With the Duke, Quongti will perform the grand tour, and visit the polished courts of Sydney and Capetown.After prevailing on his pupil, with great difficulty, to subdue a violent and imprudent passion which he had conceived for a Hottentot lady, of great beauty and accomplishments indeed, but of dubious character, he will travel with him to the United States of America.But that tremendous war which will be fatal to American liberty will, at that time, be raging through the whole federation.At New York the travellers will hear of the final defeat and death of the illustrious champion of freedom, Jonathon Higginbottom, and of the elevation of Ebenezer Hogsflesh to the perpetual Presidency.
They will not choose to proceed in a journey which would expose them to the insults of that brutal soldiery, whose cruelty and rapacity will have devastated Mexico and Colombia, and now, at length, enslaved their own country.
On their return to England, A.D.2810, the death of the Duke will compel his preceptor to seek for a subsistence by literary labours.His fame will be raised by many small productions of considerable merit; and he will at last obtain a permanent place in the highest class of writers by his great epic poem.
The celebrated work will become, with unexampled rapidity, a popular favourite.The sale will be so beneficial to the author that, instead of going about the dirty streets on his velocipede, he will be enabled to set up his balloon.
The character of this noble poem will be so finely and justly given in the Tombuctoo Review for April 2825, that I cannot refrain from translating the passage.The author will be our poet's old preceptor, Professor Kissey Kickey.
"In pathos, in splendour of language, in sweetness of versification, Mr Quongti has long been considered as unrivalled.
In his exquisite poem on the Ornithorhynchus Paradoxus all these qualities are displayed in their greatest perfection.How exquisitely does that work arrest and embody the undefined and vague shadows which flit over an imaginative mind.The cold worldling may not comprehend it; but it will find a response in the bosom of every youthful poet, of every enthusiastic lover, who has seen an Ornithorhynchus Paradoxus by moonlight.But we were yet to learn that he possessed the comprehension, the judgment, and the fertility of mind indispensable to the epic poet.