It is very hard that a man cannot publish ten papers without stealing from himself; but to show you that this is only a knack of writing, and that the author is got into a certain road of criticism, I shall set down his remarks on the works of the gentleman whom he here glances upon, as they stand in his sixth paper, and desire the reader to compare them with the foregoing passage upon mine:
"In thirty lines his patron is a river, the primum mobile, a pilot, a victim, the sun, anything, and nothing. He bestows increase, conceals his source, makes the machine move, teaches to steer, expiates our offences, raises vapours, and looks larger as he sets."
What poem can be safe from this sort of criticism? I think I was never in my life so much offended as at a wag whom I once met with in a coffee-house: he had in his hand one of the Miscellanies, and was reading the following short copy of verses, which, without flattery to the author,[147] is, I think, as beautiful in its kind as any one in the English tongue:
Flavia the least and slightest toy
Can with resistless art employ.
This fan in meaner hands would prove
An engine of small force in love;
But she with such an air and mien,
Not to be told, or safely seen,
Directs its wanton motions so,
That it wounds more than Cupid's bow;
Gives coolness to the matchless dame,
To every other breast a flame.
When this coxcomb had done reading them, "Heyday!" says he, "what instrument is this that Flavia employs in such a manner as is not to be told, nor safely seen? In ten lines it is a toy, a Cupid's bow, a fan, and an engine in love. It has wanton motions, it wounds, it cools, and inflames."
Such criticisms make a man of sense sick, and a fool merry.
The next paragraph of the paper we are talking of falls upon somebody whom I am at a loss to guess at:[148] but I find the whole invective turns upon a man who (it seems) has been imprisoned for debt. Whoever he was, I most heartily pity him; but at the same time must put the Examiner in mind, that notwithstanding he is a critic, he still ought to remember he is a Christian. Poverty was never thought a proper subject for ridicule; and I do not remember that I ever met with a satire upon a beggar.
As for those little retortings of my own expressions, of being dull by design, witty in October, shining, excelling, and so forth; they are the common cavils of every witling, who has no other method of showing his parts, but by little variations and repetitions of the man's words whom he attacks.
But the truth of it is, the paper before me, not only in this particular, but in its very essence, is like Ovid's echo: