Read it through once

The book caught on; its pages were redolent of the country; its colour was true and vivid; it told of simple delights and did for Berkshire what no author had ever previously done for any place. Charles Lamb, then in the full enjoyment of his fame as _Elia_, said that nothing so fresh and characteristic had appeared for a long time. Sir William Elford was delighted but ventured the suggestion that the sketches would have been better if written in the form of letters, but this the author denied by reminding him that the pieces were too long, and too connected, for _real_ correspondence; “and as to anything make-believe, it has been my business to keep that out of sight as much as possible. Besides which, we are free and easy in these days, and talk to the public as a friend. Read _Elia_, or the _Sketch Book_, or Hazlitt’s _Table-Talk_, or any popular book of the new school, and you will find that we have turned over the Johnsonian periods and the Blair-ian formality to keep company with the wigs and hoops, the stiff curtseys and low bows of our ancestors. ‘Are the characters and descriptions true?’ you ask. Yes! yes! yes! As true as is well possible. You, as a great landscape painter, know that in painting a favourite scene you do a little embellish, and can’t help it; you avail yourself of happy accidents of atmosphere, and if anything be ugly, you strike it out, or if anything be wanting, you put it in. But still the picture is a likeness; and that this is a very faithful one, you will judge when I tell you that a worthy neighbour of ours, a post captain, who has been in every quarter of the globe, and is equally distinguished for the sharp look-out and _bonhomie_ of his profession, accused me most seriously of carelessness in putting _The Rose_ for _The Swan_ as the sign of our next door neighbour; and was no less disconcerted at the _misprint_ (as he called it) of B for R in the name of our next town. _A cela près_, he declares the picture to be exact. Nevertheless I do not expect to be poisoned. Why should I? I have said no harm of my neighbours, have I? The great danger would be that my dear friend Joel might be spoilt; but I take care to keep the book out of our pretty Harriette’s way; and so I hope that that prime ornament of our village will escape the snare for his vanity which the seeing so exact a portrait of himself in a printed book might occasion. By the way, the names of the villagers are true—of the higher sketches they are feigned, of course.”