Produced by Charles Bowen from page scans provided by Google Books (Robarts - University of Toronto)
Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: The Web Archive https://archive.org/details/historyandremark00defouoft (Robarts - University of Toronto)
The History and Remarkable Life of the truly honourable
With the author's preface, and an introduction by G. H. MAYNADIER, Ph. D.
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Edition De Luxe LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND SETS
Jacque is summoned before his master. _Frontispiece_
Smollett bears witness to the popularity of Defoe's _Colonel Jacque_. In the sixty-second chapter of _Roderick Random_, the hero of that novel is profoundly impressed by the genius of the disappointed poet, Melopoyn, the story of whose tragedy is Smollett's acrimonious version of the fate of his own first literary effort, _The Regicide_. Melopoyn tells Random that while waiting in vain for his tragedy to be produced, he wrote some pastorals which were rejected by one bookseller after another. A first said merely that the pastorals would not serve; a second advised Melopoyn to offer in their place something "satirical or luscious;" and a third asked if he "had got never a piece of secret history, thrown into a series of letters, or a volume of adventures, such as those of Robinson Crusoe and Colonel Jack, or a collection of conundrums, wherewith to entertain the plantations?" Smollett probably wrote this passage some time in the year 1747, for _Roderick Random_ was published in January, 1748. It was twenty-four years earlier--December twentieth, 1722--that _Colonel Jacque_ had been published, or, to give it the name set forth by its flaunting title-page:--_The History and Remarkable Life of the truly Honourable Colonel Jacque, vulgarly called Col. Jack, who was born a Gentleman; put 'Prentice to a Pickpocket; was six and twenty years a Thief, and then kidnapped to Virginia; came back a Merchant; was five times married to four Whores; went into the Wars, behaved bravely, got Preferment, was made Colonel of a Regiment; came over, and fled with the Chevalier, is still abroad Completing a Life of Wonders, and resolves to die a General_. Surely a book for servants, readers of our time will be apt to think on looking at this title-page; and yet _Colonel Jacque_ is found to-day in many a gentleman's library. This is no reason, though, why it should still retain considerable popularity in Smollett's day. In less time after their appearance, some books which live forever in literature have been forgotten by the great mass of readers. What was it now that kept _Colonel Jacque_ popular a quarter of a century after its publication?