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OLIVER GOLDSMITH S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK II.
1759. learning itself to the contempts incurred by its professors ;
M. 31. but he would no more have an author draw a quill merely to
take a purse, than present a pistol for the same purpose.*
These passages in the Enquiry were startling, and not to
be protected from notice by even the obscurity of the writer. They struck at the seat of a monstrous evil. " We must observe," said Smollett, noticing the book in the Critical Revieiv, " that, against his own conviction, this " author has indiscriminately censured the two Reviews; " confounding a work undertaken from public spirit, with " one supported for the sordid purposes of a bookseller.— " It might not become us to say more on this subject." t The sordid bookseller was not so delicate, and did say much more; calling in for the purpose the pen of Kenrick, a notorious and convicted libeller. " It requires a good deal " of art and temper," said the Monthly Review, after objections to the whole treatise, some just enough, on the score of 'its want of learning and too hasty decision on national literatures, others, connected with the subject of patronage, shallow as they were severe, " for a man to write " consistently against the dictates of his own heart. Thus, " notwithstanding our Author talks so familiarly of us, the " great, and affects to be thought to stand in the rank of " Patrons, we cannot help thinking that in more places than " one he has betrayed, in himself, the man he so severely " condemns for drawing his quill to take a purse. We are "even so firmly convinced of this, that we dare put the " question home to his conscience, whether he never " experienced the unhappy situation he so feelingly describes " in that of a Literary Understrapper ? His remarking " him. as coming down from his garret, to rummage the
* Chap. x. f Critical Review, TO. 372 ; April 1759.
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