 it, and with his credit when he is out of cash. When they want
business, he either finds employment for them in his own service, or recommends
them to booksellers to execute some project he has formed for their subsistence.
They are always welcome to his table, (which, though plain, is plentiful) and to
his good offices as far as they will go; and when they see occasion, they make
use of his name with the most petulant familiarity; nay, they do not even
scruple to arrogate to themselves the merit of some of his performances, and
have been known to sell their own lucubrations as the produce of his brain. The
Scotchman you saw at dinner once personated him at an ale-house in
West-Smithfield, and, in the character of S--, had his head broke by a
cow-keeper, for having spoke disrespectfully of the Christian religion; but he
took the law of him in his own person, and the assailant was fain to give him
ten pounds to withdraw his action.«
    I observed, that all this appearance of liberality on the side of Mr. S--
was easily accounted for, on the supposition that they flattered him in private,
and engaged his adversaries in public; and yet I was astonished, when I
recollected that I often had seen this writer virulently abused in papers,
poems, and pamphlets, and not a pen was drawn in his defence. - »But you will be
more astonished (said he) when I assure you, those very guests whom you saw at
his table to-day, were the authors of great part of that abuse; and he himself
is well aware of their particular favours, for they are all eager to detect and
betray one another.« - »But this is doing the devil's work for nothing (cried
I). What should induce them to revile their benefactor without provocation?«
»Envy (answered Dick) is the general incitement; but they are galled by an
additional scourge of provocation. S-- directs a literary journal, in which
their productions are necessarily brought to trial; and though many of them have
been treated with such lenity and favour as they little deserved, yet the
slightest censure, such as, perhaps, could not be avoided with any pretensions
to candour and impartiality, has rankled in the hearts of those authors to such
a degree, that they have taken immediate vengeance on the critic in anonymous
libels, letters, and lampoons. Indeed, all the writers of the age, good, bad,
and indifferent,
