so much degraded literature from its natural rank, as the
practice of indecent and promiscuous dedication; for what credit can he
expect who professes himself the hireling of vanity, however profligate,
and without shame or scruple, celebrates the worthless, dignifies the
mean, and gives to the corrupt, licentious, and oppressive, the
ornaments which ought only to add grace to truth, and loveliness to
innocence? Every other kind of adulation, however shameful, however
mischievous, is less detestable than the crime of counterfeiting
characters, and fixing the stamp of literary sanction upon the dross and
refuse of the world.

Yet I would not overwhelm the authors with the whole load of infamy, of
which part, perhaps the greater part, ought to fall upon their patrons.
If he that hires a bravo, partakes the guilt of murder, why should he
who bribes a flatterer, hope to be exempted from the shame of falsehood?
The unhappy dedicator is seldom without some motives which obstruct,
though not destroy, the liberty of choice; he is oppressed by miseries
which he hopes to relieve, or inflamed by ambition which he expects to
gratify. But the patron has no incitements equally violent; he can
receive only a short gratification, with which nothing but stupidity
could dispose him to be pleased. The real satisfaction which praise can
afford is by repeating aloud the whispers of conscience, and by shewing
us that we have not endeavoured to deserve well in vain. Every other
encomium is, to an intelligent mind, satire and reproach; the
celebration of those virtues which we feel ourselves to want, can only
impress a quicker sense of our own defects, and shew that we have not
yet satisfied the expectations of the world, by forcing us to observe
how much fiction must contribute to the completion of our character.

Yet sometimes the patron may claim indulgence; for it does not always
happen, that the encomiast has been much encouraged to his attempt. Many
a hapless author, when his book, and perhaps his dedication, was ready
for the press, has waited long before any one would pay the price of
prostitution, or consent to hear the praises destined to insure his name
against the casualties of time; and many a complaint has been vented
against the decline of learning, and neglect of genius, when either
parsimonious prudence has declined expense, or honest indignation
rejected falsehood. But if at last, after long inquiry and innumerable
disappoin