those who employ
only their hands and feet in the service of mankind may be easily
justified, I am far from intending to incite the petulance of pride, to
justify the superciliousness of grandeur, or to intercept any part of
that tenderness and benevolence which, by the privilege of their common
nature, one may claim from another.

That it would be neither wise nor equitable to discourage the
husbandman, the labourer, the miner, or the smith, is generally granted;
but there is another race of beings equally obscure and equally
indigent, who, because their usefulness is less obvious to vulgar
apprehensions, live unrewarded and die unpitied, and who have been long
exposed to insult without a defender, and to censure without an
apologist.

The authors of London were formerly computed by Swift at several
thousands, and there is not any reason for suspecting that their number
has decreased. Of these only a very few can be said to produce, or
endeavour to produce, new ideas, to extend any principle of science, or
gratify the imagination with any uncommon train of images or contexture
of events; the rest, however laborious, however arrogant, can only be
considered as the drudges of the pen, the manufacturers of literature,
who have set up for authors, either with or without a regular
initiation, and, like other artificers, have no other care than to
deliver their tale of wares at the stated time.

It has been formerly imagined, that he who intends the entertainment or
instruction of others, must feel in himself some peculiar impulse of
genius; that he must watch the happy minute in which his natural fire is
excited, in which his mind is elevated with nobler sentiments,
enlightened with clearer views, and invigorated with stronger
comprehension; that he must carefully select his thoughts and polish his
expressions; and animate his efforts with the hope of raising a monument
of learning, which neither time nor envy shall be able to destroy.

But the authors whom I am now endeavouring to recommend have been too
long _hackneyed in the ways of men_ to indulge the chimerical ambition
of immortality; they have seldom any claim to the trade of writing, but
that they have tried some other without success; they perceive no
particular summons to composition, except the sound of the clock; they
have no other rule than the law or the fashion for admitting their
thoughts or rejecting them; and about the opinion of posterity they have