LETTER LXXI.
Berlin.
I thank you, Sir, for the poem and pamphlets you sent me by ——. I own I do not think the former a very capital performance; yet am not surprised at the great run it has had. For though it had contained still a smaller proportion of wit, it would have been a good deal relished on account of the malignity and personal abuse with which it abounds.
The English nation have always had a great appetite for political writings; but those who cater for them have of late served up such messes of mere politics, as seem at length to have turned their stomachs. A little wit or personal satire is now found necessary to make even a newspaper go down. The first is not always at the command of the caterer: he therefore uses the other in its place, which answers his purpose as well.
I never had any delight in contemplating or exposing the dark side of human nature; but there are some shades so obvious, that you cannot open your eyes without observing them. The satisfaction that many people enjoy in reading libels, wherein private characters are traduced, is of that number. If to be abused in pamphlets and news-papers is considered as adversity, the truth of Rochefoucault’s maxim is uncontrovertible:—Dans l’adversité de nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons toujours quelquechose qui ne nous déplait pas.
The common scribblers of the age have turned to their own account this malevolent disposition, which they perceive to be so prevalent among men.—Like the people who provide bulls and other animals to be baited by dogs for the amusement of the spectators, these gentlemen turn out a few characters every week to be mangled and torn in the most cruel manner in the public news-papers.
It is the savage taste of those who pay for these amusements, which keeps them in use. The writers of scurrilous books in London often bear no more malice to the individuals they abuse, than the people at Paris and Vienna, who provide the other horrid amusement, bear to the boars, bulls, and other animals which they expose to the fury of dogs.
As for the scribblers, they seldom have any knowledge of the persons whose characters they attack. It is far from being impossible, that the author of the severe verses you sent me, has no more acquaintance with the lords and gentlemen against whom he writes with such bitterness, than the weaver who wove their pocket-handkerchiefs. The motive for the fabrication of the one as well as the other commodity most probably was daily bread, and this poetaster has preferred satire to panegyric, merely because he knew the first was most to the taste of his customers.