I be damn'd, for there's not much danger in a poet's being damn'd,--

'Damnation follows death in other men,
But your damn'd Poet lives and writes agen.'"

And so they do, even unto the present, otherwise blessed day. But, dear
old friend, is not this sublime sneering? and is there not an honest ray
or two of truth mingled here and there in the colder coruscations of
this wit? Of the sincerity of this repudiation and renunciation so
fashionable in the Pope circle I have nothing to say; but in certain
moods of the mind it is vastly entertaining, and cures one's melancholy
as cautery cures certain physical afflictions. It may be amusing for you
also to notice that Don Quixote's niece and Pope were of the same
mind. She called poetry "a catching and incurable disease," and Pope's
unfortunate Poet "lives and writes agen."

And, after all, Bobus, why should we not be tender with all the
gentlemen who crowd the catalogues and slumber upon the shelves? It may
be all very well for you or me, whose legend should be

"Prandeo, poto, cano, ludo, lego, coeno, quiesco,"

to laugh at them; but who shall say that they did not do their best,
and, if they were stupid, pavonian, arrogant, self-sufficient, and
top-heavy, that they were not honestly so? I always liked that boast of
Flaccus about his "monument harder than brass." It is a cheerful sight
to see a poor devil of an author in his garret, snapping his fingers at
the critics. "No beggar," wrote Pope, "is so poor but he can keep a cur,
and no author so beggarly but he can keep a critic." And, after all,
abuse is pleasanter than contemptuous and silent neglect. I do honestly