thorship to establish the claims of these Epicurean
votaries of the Muses, you find that they had a great reputation
at Cambridge, that they were senior wranglers or successful
prize-essayists, that they visit at Holland House, and, to support that
honour, must be supposed, of course, to occupy the first rank in the
world of letters.(1) It is possible, however, that they have some
manuscript work in hand, which is of too much importance (and the writer
has too much at stake in publishing it) hastily to see the light: or
perhaps they once had an article in the Edinburgh Review, which was much
admired at the time, and is kept by them ever since as a kind of diploma
and unquestionable testimonial of merit. They are not like Grub Street
authors, who write for bread, and are paid by the sheet. Like misers who
hoard their wealth, they are supposed to be masters of all the wit and
sense they do not impart to the public. 'Continents have most of what
they contain,' says a considerable philosopher; and these persons, it
must be confessed, have a prodigious command over themselves in the
expenditure of light and learning. The Oriental curse, '0 that
mine enemy had written a book!' hangs suspended over them. By never
committing themselves, they neither give a handle to the malice of the
world, nor excite the jealousy of friends; and keep all the reputation
they have got, not by discreetly blotting, but by never writing a line.
Some one told Sheridan, who was always busy about some new work and
never advancing any farther in it, that he would not write because he
was afraid of the author of the _School for Scandal._ So these idle
pretenders are afraid of undergoing a comparison with themselves in
something they have never done, but have had credit for doing. They do
not acquire celebrity, they assume it; and escape detection by never
venturing out of their imposing and mysterious incognito. They do not
let themselves down by everyday work: for them to appear in print is a
work of supererogation as much as in lords and kings; and like gentlemen
with a large landed estate, they live on their established character,
and do nothing (or as little as possible) to increase or lose it. There
is not a more deliberate piece of grave imposture going. I know a person
of this description who has been employed many years (by implication)
in a translation of Thucydides, of which no one ever saw a word, but it
does not answer the purpose of bolsterin