' 'But this is doing the devil's work for nothing (cried
I). What should induce them to revile their benefactor without
provocation?' 'Envy (answered Dick) is the general incitement;
but they are galled by an additional scourge of provocation. S--
directs a literary journal, in which their productions are
necessarily brought to trial; and though many of them have been
treated with such lenity and favour as they little deserved, yet
the slightest censure, such as, perhaps, could not be avoided
with any pretensions to candour and impartiality, has rankled in
the hearts of those authors to such a degree, that they have
taken immediate vengeance on the critic in anonymous libels,
letters, and lampoons. Indeed, all the writers of the age, good,
bad, and indifferent, from the moment he assumed this office,
became his enemies, either professed or in petto, except those of
his friends who knew they had nothing to fear from his
strictures; and he must be a wiser man than me who can tell what
advantage or satisfaction he derives from having brought such a
nest of hornets about his ears.'
I owned, that was a point which might deserve consideration; but
still I expressed a desire to know his real motives for
continuing his friendship to a set of rascals equally ungrateful
and insignificant.
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