 there is no Conduct so fair and disinterested, but that it may be
misunderstood by Ignorance, and misrepresented by Malice, I have been sometimes
tempted to preserve my own Reputation, at the Expence of my Reader, and to
transcribe the Original, or at least to quote Chapter and Verse, whenever I have
made Use either of the Thought or Expression of another. I am indeed in some
Doubt that I have often suffered by the contrary Method; and that by suppressing
the original Author's Name, I have been rather suspected of Plagiarism, than
reputed to act from the amiable Motive above-assigned by that justly celebrated
Frenchman.
    Now to obviate all such Imputations for the future, I do here confess and
justify the Fact. The Antients may be considered as a rich Common, where every
Person who hath the smallest Tenement in Parnassus hath a free Right to fatten
his Muse. Or, to place it in a clearer Light, we Moderns are to the Antients
what the Poor are to the Rich. By the Poor here I mean, that large and venerable
Body which, in English, we call The Mob. Now, whoever hath had the Honour to be
admitted to any Degree of Intimacy with this Mob, must well know that it is one
of their established Maxims, to plunder and pillage their rich Neighbours
without any Reluctance; and that this is held to be neither Sin nor Shame among
them. And so constantly do they abide and act by this Maxim, that in every
Parish almost in the Kingdom, there is a Kind of Confederacy ever carrying on
against a certain Person of Opulence called the Squire, whose Property is
considered as Free-Booty by all his poor Neighbours; who, as they conclude that
there is no Manner of Guilt in such Depredations, look upon it as a Point of
Honour and moral Obligation to conceal, and to preserve each other from
Punishment on all such Occasions.
    In like Manner are the Ancients, such as Homer, Virgil, Horace, Cicero, and
the rest, to be esteemed among us Writers, as so many wealthy Squires, from whom
we, the Poor of Parnassus, claim an immemorial Custom of taking whatever we can
come at. This Liberty I demand, and this I am as ready to allow again to my poor
Neighbours in their Turn. All I profess, and all I require from my Brethren, is
to maintain the same strict Honesty among ourselves, which the Mob shew to one
another. To steal from one another, is indeed highly criminal and indecent; for
this may be strictly stiled defrauding the Poor (sometimes perhaps
