shopmen and _barkers_ tease you to buy goods. I have
no notion of this vanity at second-hand; nor can I see how this servile
testimony from inferiors ('some followers of mine own') can be a proof
of merit. It may soothe the ear, but that it should impose on the
understanding, I own, surprises me; yet there are persons who cannot
exist without a _cortege_ of this kind about them, in which they smiling
read the opinion of the world, in the midst of all sorts of rancorous
abuse and hostility, as Otho called for his mirror in the Illyrian
field. One good thing is, that this evil, in some degree, cures itself;
and when a man has been nearly ruined by a herd of these sycophants,
he finds them leaving him, like thriftless dependants, for some more
eligible situation, carrying away with them all the tattle they can pick
up, and some left-off suit of finery. The same proneness to adulation
which made them lick the dust before one idol makes them bow as low to
the rising Sun; they are as lavish of detraction as they were prurient
with praise; and the _protege_ and admirer of the editor of the -----
figures in Blackwood's train. The man is a lackey, and it is of little
consequence whose livery he wears!

I would advise those who volunteer the office of puffing to go the whole
length of it. No half-measures will do. Lay it on thick and threefold,
or not at all. If you are once harnessed into that vehicle, it will be
in vain for you to think of stopping. You must drive to the devil at
once. The mighty Tamburlane, to whose car you are yoked, cries out:

Holloa, you pamper'd jades of Asia,
Can you not drive but twenty miles a day?

He has you on the hip, for you have pledged your taste and judgment to
his genius. Never fear but he will drive this wedge. If you are once
screwed into such a machine, you must extricate yourself by main force.
No hyperboles are too much: any drawback, any admiration on this side
idolatry, is high treason. It is an unpardonable offence to say that the
last production of your patron is not so good as the one before it, or
that a performer shines more in one character than another. I remember
once hearing a player declare that he never looked into any newspapers
or magazines on account of the abuse that was always levelled at himself
in them, though there were not less than three persons in company who
made it their business through these conduit pipes of fame to 'cry him
up to the top of the compass.' T