"The illustrious suffrages with which my piece has been honored will make me dispense with answering my adversaries—the applauses of the public." Erase all that, sir; believe me you have had no illustrious suffrages; your piece is eternally forgotten.
"Some censors have pretended that there are too many events in the third act; and that in the fourth the princess is too late in discovering the tender sentiments of her heart for her lover. To that I answer—" Answer nothing, my friend, for nobody has spoken-, or will speak of thy princess. Thy piece has fallen because it is tiresome, and written in flat and barbarous verse; thy preface is a prayer for the dead, but it will not revive them.
Others attest that all Europe has not understood their treatises on compatibility—on the Supralapsarians—on the difference which should be made between the Macedonian and Valentinian heresies, etc. Truly, I believe that nobody understands them, since nobody reads them.
We are inundated with this trash and with continual repetition; with insipid romances which copy their predecessors; with new systems founded on ancient reveries; and little histories taken from larger ones.
Do you wish to be an author? Do you wish to make a book? Recollect that it must be new and useful, or at least agreeable. Why from your provincial retreat would you assassinate me with another quarto, to teach me that a king ought to be just, and that Trajan was more virtuous than Caligula? You insist upon printing the sermons which have lulled your little obscure town to repose, and will put all our histories under contributions to extract from them the life of a prince of whom you can say nothing new.
If you have written a history of your own time, doubt not but you will find some learned chronologist, or newspaper commentator, who will relieve you as to a date, a Christian name, or a squadron which you have wrongly placed at the distance of three hundred paces from the place where if really stood. Be grateful, and correct these important errors forthwith.
If an ignoramus, or an empty fool, pretend to criticise this thing or the other, you may properly confute him; but name him rarely, for fear of soiling your writings. If you are attacked on your style, never answer; your work alone should reply.
If you are said to be sick, content yourself that you are well, without wishing to prove to the people that you are in perfect health; and, above all, remember that the world cares very little whether you are well or ill.
A hundred authors compile to get their bread, and twenty fools extract, criticise, apologize, and satirize these compilations to get bread also, because they have no profession. All these people repair on Fridays to the lieutenant of the police at Paris to demand permission to sell their drugs. They have audience immediately after the courtesans, who do not regard them, because they know that they are poor customers.
They return with a tacit permission to sell and distribute throughout the kingdom their stories; their collection of bon-mots; the life of the unfortunate Régis; the translation of a German poem; new discoveries on eels; a new copy of verses; a treatise on the origin of bells, or on the loves of the toads. A bookseller buys their productions for ten crowns; they give five of them to the journalist, on condition that he will speak well of them in his newspaper. The critic takes their money, and says all the ill he can of their books. The aggrieved parties go to complain to the Jew, who protects the wife of the journalist, and the scene closes by the critic being carried to Fort Evêque; and these are they who call themselves authors!