qualities to beguile him into admiration of what is essentially
detestable. Whether the author has fulfilled his duty he leaves others
to judge, that his readers will perform theirs he by no means feels
assured. The vulgar--among whom I would not be understood to mean
merely the rabble--the vulgar I say (between ourselves) extend their
influence far around, and unfortunately--set the fashion. Too
shortsighted to reach my full meaning, too narrow-minded to comprehend
the largeness of my views, too disingenuous to admit my moral aim--they
will, I fear, almost frustrate my good intentions, and pretend to
discover in my work an apology for the very vice which it has been my
object to condemn, and will perhaps make the poor poet, to whom anything
rather than justice is usually accorded, responsible for his simplicity.

Thus we have a _Da capo_ of the old story of Democritus and the
Abderitans, and our worthy Hippocrates would needs exhaust whole
plantations of hellebore, were it proposed to remedy this mischief by a
healing decoction.

[This alludes to the fable amusingly recorded by Wieland in his
Geschichte der Abderiten. The Abderitans, who were a byword among
the ancients for their extreme simplicity, are said to have sent
express for Hipocrates to cure their great townsman Democritus,
whom they believed to be out of his senses, because his sayings
were beyond their comprehension. Hippocrates, on conversing with
Democritus, having at once discovered that the cause lay with
themselves, assembled the senate and principal inhabitants in the
market-place with the promise of instructing them in the cure of
Democritus. He then banteringly advised them to import six
shiploads of hellebore of the very best quality, and on its arrival
to distribute it among the citizens, at least seven pounds per