asy matter
by clamour to drown their censure, and to silence them by urging the
more numerous commendations of others. They are yet the wisest who
transcribe whole discourses from others, and then reprint them as their
own. By doing so they make a cheap and easy seizure to themselves of
that reputation which cost the first author so much time and trouble to
procure. If they are at any time pricked a little in conscience for fear
of discovery, they feed themselves however with this hope, that if they
be at last found plagiaries, yet at least for some time they have the
credit of passing for the genuine authors. It is pleasant to see how all
these several writers are puffed up with the least blast of applause,
especially if they come to the honour of being pointed at as they walk
along the streets, when their several pieces are laid open upon every
bookseller's stall, when their names are embossed in a different
character upon the tide-page, sometime only with the two first letters,
and sometime with fictitious cramp terms, which few shall understand the
meaning of; and of those that do, all shall not agree in their verdict
of the performance; some censuring, others approving it, men's judgments
being as different as their palates, that being toothsome to one which
is unsavoury and nauseous to another: though it is a sneaking piece of
cowardice for authors to put feigned names to their works, as if, like
bastards of their brain, they were afraid to own them. Thus one styles
himself Telemachus, another Stelenus, a third Polycrates, another
Thrasyma-chus, and so on. By the same liberty we may ransack the whole
alphabet, and jumble together any letters that come next to hand. It is
farther very pleasant when these coxcombs employ their pens in writing
congratulatory episdes, poems, and panegyricks, upon each other, wherein
one shall be complimented with the title of Alcaeus, another shall be
charactered for the incomparable Callimachus; this shall be commended
for a completer orator than Tully himself; a fourth shall be told by his
fellow-fool that the divine Plato comes short of him for a philosophic
soul. Sometime again they take up the cudgels, and challenge out an
antagonist, and so get a name by a combat at dispute and controversy,
while the unwary readers draw sides according to their different
judgments: the longer the quarrel holds the more irreconcilable it
grows; and when both parties are weary, they each pretend the