Here, perhaps, I may again seem to be vain; but if all these Facts are true (as true they are) how can I help it? Why am I oblig'd to conceal them? The Merit of the best of them is not so extraordinary as to have warn'd me to be nice upon it; and the Praise due to them is so small a Fish, it was scarce worth while to throw my Line into the Water for it. If I confess my Vanity while a Boy, can it be Vanity, when a Man, to remember it? And if I have a tolerable Feature, will not that as much belong to my Picture as an Imperfection? In a word, from what I have mentioned, I wou'd observe only this; That when we are conscious of the least comparative Merit in ourselves, we shou'd take as much care to conceal the Value we set upon it, as if it were a real Defect: To be elated or vain upon it is shewing your Money before People in want; ten to one but some who may think you to have too much may borrow, or pick your Pocket before you get home. He who assumes Praise to himself, the World will think overpays himself. Even the Suspicion of being vain ought as much to be dreaded as the Guilt itself. Cæsar was of the same Opinion in regard to his Wife's Chastity. Praise, tho' it may be our due, is not like a Bank-Bill, to be paid upon Demand; to be valuable it must be voluntary. When we are dun'd for it, we have a Right and Privilege to refuse it. If Compulsion insists upon it, it can only be paid as Persecution in Points of Faith is, in a counterfeit Coin: And who ever believ'd Occasional Conformity to be sincere? Nero, the most vain Coxcomb of a Tyrant that ever breath'd, cou'd not raise an unfeigned Applause of his Harp by military Execution; even where Praise is deserv'd, Ill-nature and Self-conceit (Passions that poll a majority of Mankind) will with less reluctance part with their Mony than their Approbation. Men of the greatest Merit are forced to stay 'till they die before the World will fairly make up their Account: Then indeed you have a Chance for your full Due, because it is less grudg'd when you are incapable of enjoying it: Then perhaps even Malice shall heap Praises upon your Memory; tho' not for your sake, but that your surviving Competitors may suffer by a Comparison.[33] 'Tis from the same Principle that Satyr shall have a thousand Readers where Panegyric has one. When I therefore find my Name at length in the Satyrical Works of our most celebrated living Author, I never look upon those Lines as Malice meant to me, (for he knows I never provok'd it) but Profit to himself: One of his Points must be, to have many Readers: He considers that my Face and Name are more known than those of many thousands of more consequence in the Kingdom: That therefore, right or wrong, a Lick at the Laureat[34] will always be a sure Bait, ad captandum vulgus, to catch him little Readers: And that to gratify the Unlearned, by now and then interspersing those merry Sacrifices of an old Acquaintance to their Taste, is a piece of quite right Poetical Craft.[35]
But as a little bad Poetry is the greatest Crime he lays to my charge, I am willing to subscribe to his opinion of it.[36] That this sort of Wit is one of the easiest ways too of pleasing the generality of Readers, is evident from the comfortable subsistence which our weekly Retailers of Politicks have been known to pick up, merely by making bold with a Government that had unfortunately neglected to find their Genius a better Employment.
Hence too arises all that flat Poverty of Censure and Invective that so often has a Run in our publick Papers upon the Success of a new Author; when, God knows, there is seldom above one Writer among hundreds in Being at the same time whose Satyr a Man of common Sense ought to be mov'd at. When a Master in the Art is angry, then indeed we ought to be alarm'd! How terrible a Weapon is Satyr in the Hand of a great Genius? Yet even there, how liable is Prejudice to misuse it? How far, when general, it may reform our Morals, or what Cruelties it may inflict by being angrily particular,[37] is perhaps above my reach to determine. I shall therefore only beg leave to interpose what I feel for others whom it may personally have fallen upon. When I read those mortifying Lines of our most eminent Author, in his Character of Atticus[38] (Atticus, whose Genius in Verse and whose Morality in Prose has been so justly admir'd) though I am charm'd with the Poetry, my Imagination is hurt at the Severity of it; and tho' I allow the Satyrist to have had personal Provocation, yet, methinks, for that very Reason he ought not to have troubled the Publick with it: For, as it is observed in the 242d Tatler, "In all Terms of Reproof, when the Sentence appears to arise from Personal Hatred or Passion, it is not then made the Cause of Mankind, but a Misunderstanding between two Persons." But if such kind of Satyr has its incontestable Greatness; if its exemplary Brightness may not mislead inferior Wits into a barbarous Imitation of its Severity, then I have only admir'd the Verses, and expos'd myself by bringing them under so scrupulous a Reflexion: But the Pain which the Acrimony of those Verses gave me is, in some measure, allay'd in finding that this inimitable Writer, as he advances in Years, has since had Candour enough to celebrate the same Person for his visible Merit. Happy Genius! whose Verse, like the Eye of Beauty, can heal the deepest Wounds with the least Glance of Favour.
Since I am got so far into this Subject, you must give me leave to go thro' all I have a mind to say upon it; because I am not sure that in a more proper Place my Memory may be so full of it. I cannot find, therefore, from what Reason Satyr is allow'd more Licence than Comedy, or why either of them (to be admir'd) ought not to be limited by Decency and Justice. Let Juvenal and Aristophanes have taken what Liberties they please, if the Learned have nothing more than their Antiquity to justify their laying about them at that enormous rate, I shall wish they had a better excuse for them! The Personal Ridicule and Scurrility thrown upon Socrates, which Plutarch too condemns; and the Boldness of Juvenal, in writing real Names over guilty Characters, I cannot think are to be pleaded in right of our modern Liberties of the same kind. Facit indignatio versum[39] may be a very spirited Expression, and seems to give a Reader hopes of a lively Entertainment: But I am afraid Reproof is in unequal Hands when Anger is its Executioner; and tho' an outrageous Invective may carry some Truth in it, yet it will never have that natural, easy Credit with us which we give to the laughing Ironies of a cool Head. The Satyr that can smile circum præcordia ludit, and seldom fails to bring the Reader quite over to his Side whenever Ridicule and folly are at variance. But when a Person satyriz'd is us'd with the extreamest Rigour, he may sometimes meet with Compassion instead of Contempt, and throw back the Odium that was designed for him, upon the Author. When I would therefore disarm the Satyrist of this Indignation, I mean little more than that I would take from him all private or personal Prejudice, and wou'd still leave him as much general Vice to scourge as he pleases, and that with as much Fire and Spirit as Art and Nature demand to enliven his Work and keep his Reader awake.
Against all this it may be objected, That these are Laws which none but phlegmatick Writers will observe, and only Men of Eminence should give. I grant it, and therefore only submit them to Writers of better Judgment. I pretend not to restrain others from chusing what I don't like; they are welcome (if they please too) to think I offer these Rules more from an Incapacity to break them than from a moral Humanity. Let it be so! still, That will not weaken the strength of what I have asserted, if my Assertion be true. And though I allow that Provocation is not apt to weigh out its Resentments by Drachms and Scruples, I shall still think that no publick Revenge can be honourable where it is not limited by justice; and if Honour is insatiable in its Revenge it loses what it contends for and sinks itself, if not into Cruelty, at least into Vain-glory.
This so singular Concern which I have shewn for others may naturally lead you to ask me what I feel for myself when I am unfavourably treated by the elaborate Authors of our daily Papers.[40] Shall I be sincere? and own my frailty? Its usual Effect is to make me vain! For I consider if I were quite good for nothing these Pidlers in Wit would not be concern'd to take me to pieces, or (not to be quite so vain) when they moderately charge me with only Ignorance or Dulness, I see nothing in That which an honest Man need be asham'd of:[41] There is many a good Soul who from those sweet Slumbers of the Brain are never awaken'd by the least harmful Thought; and I am sometimes tempted to think those Retailers of Wit may be of the same Class; that what they write proceeds not from Malice, but Industry; and that I ought no more to reproach them than I would a Lawyer that pleads against me for his Fee; that their Detraction, like Dung thrown upon a Meadow, tho' it may seem at first to deform the Prospect, in a little time it will disappear of itself and leave an involuntary Crop of Praise behind it.
When they confine themselves to a sober Criticism upon what I write; if their Censure is just, what answer can I make to it? If it is unjust, why should I suppose that a sensible Reader will not see it, as well as myself? Or, admit I were able to expose them by a laughing Reply, will not that Reply beget a Rejoinder? And though they might be Gainers by having the worst on't in a Paper War, that is no Temptation for me to come into it. Or (to make both sides less considerable) would not my bearing Ill-language from a Chimney-sweeper do me less harm than it would be to box with him, tho' I were sure to beat him? Nor indeed is the little Reputation I have as an Author worth the trouble of a Defence. Then, as no Criticism can possibly make me worse than I really am; so nothing I can say of myself can possibly make me better: When therefore a determin'd Critick comes arm'd with Wit and Outrage to take from me that small Pittance I have, I wou'd no more dispute with him than I wou'd resist a Gentleman of the Road to save a little Pocket-Money.[42] Men that are in want themselves seldom make a Conscience of taking it from others. Whoever thinks I have too much is welcome to what share of it he pleases: Nay, to make him more merciful (as I partly guess the worst he can say of what I now write) I will prevent even the Imputation of his doing me Injustice, and honestly say it myself, viz. That of all the Assurances I was ever guilty of, this of writing my own Life is the most hardy. I beg his Pardon!—--Impudent is what I should have said! That through every Page there runs a Vein of Vanity and Impertinence which no French Ensigns memoires ever came up to; but, as this is a common Error, I presume the Terms of Doating Trifler, Old Fool, or Conceited Coxcomb will carry Contempt enough for an impartial Censor to bestow on me; that my style is unequal, pert, and frothy, patch'd and party-colour'd like the Coat of an Harlequin; low and pompous, cramm'd with Epithets, strew'd with Scraps of second-hand Latin from common Quotations; frequently aiming at Wit, without ever hitting the Mark; a mere Ragoust toss'd up from the offals of other authors: My Subject below all Pens but my own, which, whenever I keep to, is flatly daub'd by one eternal Egotism: That I want nothing but Wit to be as accomplish'd a Coxcomb here as ever I attempted to expose on the Theatre: Nay, that this very Confession is no more a Sign of my Modesty than it is a Proof of my Judgment, that, in short, you may roundly tell me, that——Cinna (or Cibber) vult videri Pauper, et est Pauper.
When humble Cinna cries, I'm poor and low,
You may believe him——he is really so.
Well, Sir Critick! and what of all this? Now I have laid myself at your Feet, what will you do with me? Expose me? Why, dear Sir, does not every Man that writes expose himself? Can you make me more ridiculous than Nature has made me? You cou'd not sure suppose that I would lose the Pleasure of Writing because you might possibly judge me a Blockhead, or perhaps might pleasantly tell other People they ought to think me so too. Will not they judge as well from what I say as what You say? If then you attack me merely to divert yourself, your Excuse for writing will be no better than mine. But perhaps you may want Bread: If that be the Case, even go to Dinner, i' God's name![43]