If Lamb had known and read the first work published by Rowley, it is
impossible to imagine that it would not have been honored by the tribute
of some passing and priceless word. Why it has never been reissued
(except in a private reprint for the Percy Society) among the many less
deserving and less interesting revivals from the apparently and not
really ephemeral literature of its day would be to me an insoluble
problem, if I were so ignorant as never to have realized the too obvious
fact that chance, pure and simple chance, guides or misguides the
intelligence, and suggests or fails to suggest, the duty of scholars and
of students who have given time and thought to such far from unimportant
or insignificant matters. "A Search for Money; or, a Quest for the
Wandering Knight Monsieur L'Argent," is not comparable with the best
pamphlets of Nash or of Dekker: a competent reader of those admirable
improvisations will at the first opening feel inclined to regard it as a
feeble and servile imitation of their quaint and obsolescent manner; but
he will soon find an original and a vigorous vein of native humor in
their comrade or their disciple. The seekers after the wandering knight,
baffled in their search on shore, are compelled to recognize the sad
fact that "the sea is lunatic, and mad folks keep no money, he would
sink if he were there.
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