least a corner, and who would not while living have given sixpence to
insure immortality, so certain were they of monuments harder than
brass. The murrain among the poets is the severest. For, in the first
place, a fine butterfly may have a pin stuck through his stomach even
while living. There are Bavius and Maevius, who have been laughed at
since Virgil wrote his Third Eclogue. Now why does the world laugh?
What does the world know of either? They were stupid and malevolent,
were they? Pray, how do you know that they were? You have Virgil's word
for it. But how do you know that Virgil was just? It might have been
the east wind; it might have been an indigestion; it might have been
Virgil's vanity; it might have been all a mistake. When a man has once
been thoroughly laughed down, people take his stupidity for granted;
and although he may grow as wise as Solomon, living he is considered a
fool, dying he is regarded as a fool, and dead he is remembered as a
fool. Do you not suppose that very responsible folk were pilloried in
the "Dunciad"? My own opinion is, that a person must have had some
merit, or he would not have been put there at all. How many of those
who laugh at Dennis and Shadwell know anything of either? And let me
ask you if the Pope set had such a superabundance of heart, that you
would have been willing, with childlike confidence, to submit your own
verses to their criticism? For myself, I am free to say that I have no
patience with satirists. I never knew a just one. I never heard of a
fair one. They are a mean, malicious, murdering tribe,--they are a
supercilious, dogmatical, envious, suspicious company,--knocking down
their fellow-creatures in the name of Virtue for their own
gratification,--mere Mohawks, kept by family influence out of the
lock-up.

But of all Mohawks, Time is the fiercest. If I were upon the high road
to fame, if I had honestly determined to win immortality or perish in