my paper with the flowers of antiquity,
others desire news from Flanders. Some approve my criticisms on the
dead, and others my censures on the living. For this reason, I once
resolved in the new edition of my works, to range my several papers
under distinct heads, according as their principal design was to benefit
and instruct the different capacities of my readers, and to follow the
example of some very great authors, by writing at the head of each
discourse, "Ad Aulam," "Ad Academiam," "Ad Populum," "Ad Clerum."

There is no particular in which my correspondents of all ages,
conditions, sexes, and complexions, universally agree, except only in
their thirst after scandal. It is impossible to conceive how many have
recommended their neighbours to me upon this account, or how
unmercifully I have been abused by several unknown hands, for not
publishing the secret histories of cuckoldom that I have received from
almost every street in town.

It would indeed be very dangerous for me to read over the many praises
and eulogiums which come post to me from all the corners of the nation,
were they not mixed with many checks, reprimands, scurrilities, and
reproaches, which several of my good-natured countrymen cannot forbear
sending me, though it often costs them twopence or a groat before they
can convey them to my hands:[235] so that sometimes when I am put into
the best humour in the world, after having read a panegyric upon my
performance, and looked upon myself as a benefactor to the British
nation, the next letter perhaps I open, begins with, "You old doting
scoundrel;" "Are not you a sad dog?" "Sirrah, you deserve to have your
nose slit;" and the like ingenious conceits. These little mortifications
are necessary to surpass that pride and vanity which naturally arise in
the mind of a received author, and enable me to bear the reputation
which my courteous readers bestow upon me, without becoming a coxcomb by
it. It was for the same reason, that when a Roman general entered the
city in the pomp of a triumph, the commonwealth allowed of several
little drawbacks to his reputation, by conniving at such of the rabble
as repeated libels and lampoons upon him within his hearing, and by that
means engaged his thoughts upon his weakness and imperfections, as well
as on the merits that advanced him to so great honours. The conqueror
however was not the less esteemed for being a man in some particulars,
because he appeared as a god