n.

I have long known that splendour of reputation is not to be counted
among the necessaries of life, and therefore shall not much repine if
praise be withheld till it is better deserved. But surely I may be
allowed to complain, that, in a nation of authors, not one has thought
me worthy of notice after so fair an invitation.

At the time when the rage of writing has seized the old and young, when
the cook warbles her lyricks in the kitchen, and the thrasher
vociferates his heroicks in the barn; when our traders deal out
knowledge in bulky volumes, and our girls forsake their samplers to
teach kingdoms wisdom; it may seem very unnecessary to draw any more
from their proper occupations, by affording new opportunities of
literary fame[1].

I should be indeed unwilling to find that, for the sake of corresponding
with the Idler, the smith's iron had cooled on the anvil, or the
spinster's distaff stood unemployed. I solicit only the contributions of
those who have already devoted themselves to literature, or, without any
determinate intention, wander at large through the expanse of life, and
wear out the day in hearing at one place what they utter at another.

Of these, a great part are already writers. One has a friend in the
country upon whom he exercises his powers; whose passions he raises and
depresses; whose understanding he perplexes with paradoxes, or
strengthens by argument; whose admiration he courts, whose praises he
enjoys; and who serves him instead of a senate or a theatre; as the
young soldiers in the Roman camp learned the use of their weapons by
fencing against a post in the place of an enemy.

Another has his pockets filled with essays and epigrams, which he reads
from house to house, to select parties; and which his acquaintances are
daily entreating him to withhold no longer from the impatience of the
publick.

If among these any one is persuaded, that, by such preludes of
composition, he has qualified himself to appear in the open world, and
is yet afraid of those censures which they who have already written, and
they who cannot write, are equally ready to fulminate against publick
pretenders to fame, he may, by transmitting his performances to the
Idler, make a cheap experiment of his abilities, and enjoy the pleasure
of success, without the hazard of miscarriage.

Many advantages not generally known arise from this method of stealing
on the publick. The standing author of the paper is always t