perly
are not) who, not finding the first act of a piece answer to their
preconceived notions of what a first act should be, like Obstinate in
John Bunyan, positively thrust their fingers in their ears, that they
may not hear a word of what is coming, though perhaps the very next act
may be composed in a style as different as possible, and be written
quite to their own tastes. These Adders refuse to hear the voice of the
charmer, because the tuning of his instrument gave them offence.

"I should weary you, and myself too, if I were to go through all the
classes of the serpent kind. Two qualities are common to them all. They
are creatures of remarkably cold digestions, and chiefly haunt _pits_
and low grounds.

"I proceed with more pleasure to give you an account of a club to which
I have the honor to belong. There are fourteen of us, who are all
authors that have been once in our lives what is called _damned_. We
meet on the anniversaries of our respective nights, and make ourselves
merry at the expense of the public. The chief tenets which distinguish
our society, and which every man among us is bound to hold for gospel,
are,--

"That the public, or mob, in all ages, have been a set of blind, deaf,
obstinate, senseless, illiterate savages. That no man of genius, in his
senses, would be ambitious of pleasing such a capricious, ungrateful
rabble. That the only legitimate end of writing for them is to pick
their pockets, and, that failing, we are at full liberty to vilify and
abuse them as much as ever we think fit.

"That authors, by their affected pretences to humility, which they made
use of as a cloak to insinuate their writings into the callous senses of
the multitude, obtuse to everything but the grossest flattery, have by
degrees made that great beast their master; as we may act submission to
children till we are obliged to practise it in earnest. That authors are
and ought to be considered the masters and preceptors of the public,
and not _vice versa_. That it was so in the days of Orpheus, Linus,
and Musaeus, and would be so again, if it were not that writers prove
traitors to themselves. That, in particular, in the days of the first of
those three great authors just mentioned, audiences appear to have been
perfect models of what audiences should be; for, though along with the
trees and the rocks and the wild creatures, which he drew after him to
listen to his strains, some serpents doubtless came to hear his