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
the attempt, I should look upon the gentleman with no clothing except a
scanty forelock, and with no personal property save his scythe and
hour-glass, as my greatest enemy,--and I should behold the perpetual
efforts made to kill him with perfect complacency.
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