Abstract
Note on the text: “The Brain-Sucker: Or, the Distress of Authorship” was first published in The British Mercury in 1787, in two parts: the first part in “No. I. – May 12 1787”, pp. 14–27, and the continuation in “No. II. – May 26 1787”, pp. 43–48. The British Mercury was reissued in 1788, advertised as A New Edition. This edition survives in three copies. Our copy-text for the present edition is the Bodleian Library copy (shelfmark G Pamph 1192), which is identified with the siglum B in the notes below. This has been collated with Bodleian Library shelfmark Douce M 591 (siglum: D) and British Library shelfmark P.P.3557.mc (siglum: BL).Our choice of B as copy-text is motivated by the fact that occasional changes in spelling and wording indicate that this represents a corrected state, improving some verbal infelicities and also making the text more credible, stylistically, as a farmer’s letter, e.g. by replacing the formal “unpensioned” with the more concrete agricultural “unsown” (15), and also by giving the poor writer ‘frowzy hair’ instead of a ‘prominent beard’ (26). In editing, we have aimed for a moderately modernized text, changing long ‘s’ to round ‘s’, marking quotations with inverted commas at the beginning and end, deleting quotation marks in indirect speech, and adapting punctuation to modern usage in places where this seemed necessary or desirable. Some spellings, such as “stopt” for “stopped” or “grin’d” for “grinned” have also been modernized in order to enhance readability. Footnotes belong to the original text. All emendations and textual variants are recorded in the endnotes. Page breaks in the original text are indicated in square brackets. The explanatory endnotes refer to the original page numbers.
Highlights
Our choice of B as copy-text is motivated by the fact that occasional changes in spelling and wording indicate that this represents a corrected state, improving some verbal infelicities and making the text more credible, stylistically, as a farmer’s letter, e.g. by replacing the formal “unpensioned” with the more concrete agricultural “unsown” (15), and by giving the poor writer ‘frowzy hair’ instead of a ‘prominent beard’ (26)
“The Brain-Sucker” 2 careless and uneven hand, pouring profusely on some spots and passing over others altogether unsown. Sometimes he stopped short in the midst of his occupation—stared— grinned—giggled—ran, for some moments, with the greatest rapidity, and returned with a grave and solemn step! Sometimes he looked up with a contumacious countenance towards heaven, shaking with impious audacity his clenched fist; at other times his arms were folded on his breast, his eyes fixed melancholy on the ground, and the tears trickled down his cheek
The cats that caterwauled under our window were “demons vile from hell, an hateful crew.”. He contracted a shocking habit of telling with pleasure the most egregious falsehoods or transmogrifications, as he called them: as, for example, how that Midas, a great king of Cassiteria3 and pretended patron [15|16] of music, was discovered by his shaver to have ass’s ears; that the north wind had committed with a young Trojan the reproach of Sodom and Gomorrah; and that Endymion, the man of the moon, sometimes descended in the night and inhumanly filled with moonshine Dian, the miller’s maid, as she slept, unguarded girl, on the grass. He became exceedingly superstitious, supposing that the woods were frequented by familiar wizards or rural gods, as he called them; nymphs, pans, and satyrs, whom he described under forms the most fantastic
Summary
“Serio-comical” is first attested in 1749, in Smollett’s translation of Le Sage’s Gil Blas (OED). A close thematic relation to the “Brain-Sucker” is George Keate’s The Distressed Poet: A Serio-Comic Poem, in Three Cantos (London 1787). Farmer Homely: the first of many telling names in the story: “of humble background; having a plain or simple nature; unsophisticated; rustic” (OED). Cassiteria, in the history of fossils) A genus of crystals frequently found in Devonshire and Cornwall” (John Ash, The New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language [...], vol 1, London 1775). Endymion: “the most celebrated amour” of Diana, the moon (Boyse/Cooke 87), here confused with a miller’s maid. Some were called Hamadryades, whose existence was inseparably united to that of the tree they animated.” (Boyse/Cooke 171). Echo: “ceases to be a mere sound, and becomes a nymph bewailing the loss of her Narcissus” (Boyse/Cooke 221)
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