a natural train of thought, to reflect on their
condition with regard to themselves; and to inquire what degree of
happiness or vexation is annexed to the difficult and laborious
employment of providing instruction or entertainment for mankind.

In estimating the pain or pleasure of any particular state, every man,
indeed, draws his decisions from his own breast, and cannot with
certainty determine whether other minds are affected by the same causes
in the same manner. Yet by this criterion we must be content to judge,
because no other can be obtained; and, indeed, we have no reason to
think it very fallacious, for excepting here and there an anomalous
mind, which either does not feel like others, or dissembles its
sensibility, we find men unanimously concur in attributing happiness or
misery to particular conditions, as they agree in acknowledging the cold
of winter and the heat of autumn.

If we apply to authors themselves for an account of their state, it will
appear very little to deserve envy; for they have in all ages been
addicted to complaint. The neglect of learning, the ingratitude of the
present age, and the absurd preference by which ignorance and dulness
often obtain favour and rewards, have been from age to age topicks of
invective; and few have left their names to posterity, without some
appeal to future candour from the perverseness and malice of their own
times.

I have, nevertheless, been often inclined to doubt, whether authors,
however querulous, are in reality more miserable than their fellow
mortals. The present life is to all a state of infelicity; every man,
like an author, believes himself to merit more than he obtains, and
solaces the present with the prospect of the future; others, indeed,
suffer those disappointments in silence, of which the writer complains,
to show how well he has learnt the art of lamentation.

There is at least one gleam of felicity, of which few writers have
missed the enjoyment: he whose hopes have so far overpowered his fears,
as that he has resolved to stand forth a candidate for fame, seldom
fails to amuse himself, before his appearance, with pleasing scenes of
affluence or honour: while his fortune is yet under the regulation of
fancy, he easily models it to his wish, suffers no thoughts of criticks
or rivals to intrude upon his mind, but counts over the bounties of
patronage, or listens to the voice of praise.

Some there are, that talk very luxuriously of the