y or indifferent capacities--; and these,
to a man, will hate or suspect him: a hundred honest gentlemen will
dread him as a wit, and a hundred innocent women as a satirist. In a
word, whatever be his fate in poetry, it is ten to one but he must give
up all the reasonable aims of life for it. There are indeed some
advantages accruing from a genius to poetry, and they are all I can
think of,--the agreeable power of self-amusement when a man is idle or
alone; the privilege of being admitted into the best company; and the
freedom of saying as many careless things as other people, without being
so severely remarked upon.[4]

[5]I believe if any one, early in his life, should contemplate the
dangerous fate of authors, he would scarce be of their number on any
consideration. The life of a wit is a warfare upon earth; and the
present spirit of the learned world is such, that to attempt to serve it
any way one must have the constancy of a martyr, and a resolution to
suffer for its sake. 'I could wish people would believe, what I am
pretty certain they will not, that I have been much less concerned about
fame than I durst declare till this occasion, when methinks I should
find more credit than I could heretofore: since my writings have had
their fate already, and it is too late to think of prepossessing the
reader in their favour. I would plead it as some merit in me, that the
world has never been prepared for these trifles by prefaces,[6] biassed
by recommendations, dazzled with the names of great patrons,[7] wheedled
with fine reasons and pretences, or troubled with excuses.'[8] I confess
it was want of consideration that made me an author; I writ because it
amused me; I corrected because it was as pleasant to me to correct as to
write; and I published because I was told I might please such as it was
a credit to please. To what degree I have done this, I am really
ignorant. I had too much fondness for my productions to judge of them at
first, and too much judgment to be pleased with them at last. But I have
reason to think they can have no reputation which will continue long, or
which deserves to do so:[9] for they have always fallen short not only
of what I read of others, but even of my own ideas of poetry.

If any one should imagine I am not in earnest, I desire him to reflect,
that the ancients, to say the least of them, had as much genius as we;
and that to take more pains, and employ more time, cannot fail to
produce mo