rejected. To swell the bulk, or rather to diminish the tenuity of
our little work, we added it to the Imitations; and prefixing the
initials of S. T. P. for the purpose of puzzling the critics, were
not a little amused, in the sequel, by the many guesses and
conjectures into which we had ensnared some of our readers. We could
even enjoy the mysticism, qualified as it was by the poor compliment,
that our carefully written Address exhibited no "very prominent trait
of absurdity," when we saw it thus noticed in the Edinburgh Review
for November 1812:- "An Address by S. T. P. we can make nothing of;
and professing our ignorance of the author designated by these
letters, we can only add, that the Address, though a little affected,
and not very full of meaning, has no very prominent trait of
absurdity, that we can detect; and might have been adopted and
spoken, so far as we can perceive, without any hazard of ridicule.
In our simplicity we consider it as a very decent, mellifluous,
occasional prologue; and do not understand how it has found its way
into its present company."

Urged forward by hurry, and trusting to chance, two very bad
coadjutors in any enterprise, we at length congratulated ourselves on
having completed our task in time to have it printed and published by
the opening of the theatre. But alas! our difficulties, so far from
being surmounted, seemed only to be beginning. Strangers to the
arcana of the booksellers' trade, and unacquainted with their almost
invincible objection to single volumes of low price, especially when
tendered by writers who have acquired no previous name, we little
anticipated that they would refuse to publish our Rejected Addresses,
even although we asked nothing for the copyright. Such, however,
proved to be the case. Our manuscript was perused and returned to us
by several of the most eminent publishers. {4} Well do we remember