OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. CBOOKH.

1759. " bookseller. There cannot perhaps be imagined a com-
JEtTl. " bination more prejudicial to taste than this. It is the
" interest of the one to allow as little for writing, and of the
" other to write as much, as possible; accordingly tedious
" compilations and periodical magazines are the result of
" their joint endeavours. In these circumstances the
" author bids adieu to fame, writes for bread, and for that
" only imagination is seldom, called in; he sits down to
" address the venal muse with the most phlegmatic apathy;
" and, as we are told of the Russian, courts his mistress by
" falling asleep in her lap. His reputation never spreads
" in a wider circle than that of the trade, who generally
"value him, not for the fineness of his compositions, but
" the quantity he works off in a given time. A long habit
" of writing for bread thus turns the ambition of every
" author at last into avarice. He finds that he has written
" many years, that the public are scarcely acquainted even
" with his name; he despairs of applause, and turns to
" profit which invites him. He finds^ that money procures
" all those advantages, that respect, and that ease which he
" vainly expected from fame. Thus the man who under
" the protection of the great might have done honour to
" humanity, when only patronised by the bookseller, becomes
" a thing little superior to the fellow who works at the
" press."* In connection with this unpromising picture, in
his following chapter, he placed " the two literary reviews
" in London, with critical newspapers and magazines without
" number;" remarking in another place that, " were these
" Monthly Reviews and Magazines frothy, pert, or absurd,
" they might find some pardon; but to be dull and dronish
" is an encroachment on the prerogative of a folio." t For

* Chap. x. f Chap. xi.eview as " an instance of presumption in an illiterate bookseller