Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

tion, it may be made felony to teach to read without a license from the Lord Chamberlain.

This expedient, which I hope will be carefully concealed from the vulgar, must infallibly answer the great end proposed by it, and set the power of the court not only above the insults of the poets, but in a short time above the necessity of providing against them. The licenser having his authority thus extended, will in time enjoy the title and the salary without the trouble of exercising his power, and the nation will rest at length in ignorance and peace.

PREFACE

TO THEЕ

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE,

1738.

THE usual design of Addresses of this sort is to implore the candour of the publick; we have always had the more pleasing province of returning thanks, and making our acknowledgments for the kind acceptance which our Monthly Collections have met with.

This, it seems, did not sufficiently appear from the numerous sale and repeated impressions of our books, which have at once exceeded our merit and our expectation: but have been still more plainly attested by the clamours, rage, and calumnies of our competitors, of whom we have seldom taken any notice, not only because it is cruelty to insult the depressed, and folly to engage with desperation, but because we consider all their outcries, menaces, and boasts, as nothing more than advertisements in our favour, being evidently drawn up with the bitterness of baffled malice and disappointed hope; and almost discovering, in plain terms, that the unhappy authors have seventy thousand London Magazines mouldering in their

warehouses, returned from all parts of the kingdom, unsold, unread, and disregarded.

Our obligations for the encouragement we have so long continued to receive, are so much the greater, as no artifices have been omitted to supplant us. Our adversaries cannot be denied the praise of industry: how far they can be celebrated for an honest industry we leave to the decision of the publick, and even of their brethren the booksellers, not including those whose advertisements they obliterated to paste their invectives in our book.

The success of the Gentleman's Magazine has given rise to almost twenty imitations of it, which are either all dead, or very little regarded by the world. Before we had published sixteen months, we met with such a general approbation, that a knot of enterprising geniuses, and sagacious inventors, assembled from all parts of the town, agreed with an unanimity natural to understandings of the same size to seize upon our whole plan, without changing even the Title. Some weak objections were indeed made by one of them against the design, as having an air of servility, dishonesty, and piracy; but it was concluded that all these imputations might be avoided by giving the picture of St. Paul's instead of St. John's gate: it was however thought indispensably necessary to add, printed in St. John's-street, though there was then no printing-house in that place.

That these plagiaries should, after having thus stolen their whole design from us, charge us with robbery, on any occasion, is a degree of impudence scarcely to be matched, and certainly entitles them

*

to the first rank among false heroes. We have therefore inserted their names at length in our February Magazine, p. 61; being desirous that every man should enjoy the reputation he deserves.

Another attack has been made upon us by the author of COMMON SENSE, an adversary equally malicious as the former, and equally despicable. What were his views, or what his provocations, we know not, nor have thought him considerable enough to enquire. To make him any further answer would be to descend too low: but as he is one of those happy writers, who are best exposed by quoting their own words, we have given his elegant remarks in our Magazine for December, where the reader may entertain himself at his leisure with an agreeable mixture of scurrility and false grammar.

For the future we shall rarely offend him by adopting any of his performances, being unwilling to prolong the life of such pieces as deserve no other fate than to be hissed, torn, and forgotten. However, that the curiosity of our readers may not be disappointed, we shall, whenever we find him a little excelling himself, perhaps print his dissertations upon our blue covers, that they may be looked over, and stripped off, without disgracing our collection, or swelling our volumes.

* The names

are thus inserted—“ The gay and learned C. Ackers, of Swan Alley, printer; the polite and generous T. Cox, under the Royal Exchange; the eloquent and courtly J. Clark, of Duck Lane; and the modest, civil, and judicious T. Astley, of St. Paul's Church Yard, booksellers. All these names appeared in the Title of the London Magazine, begun

in 1732.

pre

We are sorry that by inserting some of his essays, we have filled the head of this petty writer with idle chimeras of applause, laurels, and immortality, nor suspected the bad effect of our regard for him, till we saw in the Postscript to one of his papers a wild * diction of the honours to be paid him by future ages. Should any mention of him be made, or his writings, by posterity, it will probably be in words like these: "In the GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE are still preserved some essays under the specious and inviting title of Common Sense. How papers of so little value came to be rescued from the common lot of dulness, we are at this distance of time unable to conceive, but imagine that personal friendship prevailed with URBAN to admit them in opposition to his judgment. If this was the reason, he met afterwards with the treatment which all deserve who tronize stupidity; for the writer, instead of acknowledging his favours, complains of injustice, robbery, and mutilation; but complains in a style so barbarous and indecent, as sufficiently confutes his own calumnies."

pa

* COMMON SENSE Journal, printed by Purser of White-Friers, March 11, 1738.

"I make no doubt but after some grave historian, three or four hundred years hence, has described the corruption, the baseness, and the flattery which men run into in these times, he will make the following observation:-In the year 1737, a certain unknown author published a writing under the title of Common Sense this writing came out weekly in little detached essays, some of which are political, some moral, and others humorous. By the best judgment that can be formed of a work, the style and language of which is become so obsolete that it is scarce intelligible, it answers the title well," &c.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »