The cunning creatures know what's meant,
When people talk of cent. per cent. 58

The best pursuits of literature
Are well committed, to be sure,
To these our blockheads, who ne'er look
Beyond the title of a book.

Thus wily sultans place their fair
Beneath a kind of being's care,

58 When people talk of cent, per cent.

Yes, gentlemen, they would give you a new edition of the devil in royal octavo, wire-wove and hot pressed, could they calculate on a hundred per cent on the cost of the impression; and for any thing less they will not run the risk of printing a bible. Some people who are professed enemies to my establishment of wooden booksellers have had the impudence to affirm them to be so mercenary, that you might bribe them at the rate of three halfpence each to cut their own throats. This we maintain to be a most slanderous assertion. Still we feel such a degree of paternal solicitude for their welfare, that we should be sorry to see them tempted by such an offer. Should we, however, apprehend any thing serious on this score, we can get them ensured at the rate of three halfpence each; which would be allowing a premium of one hundred per cent. on the value of the property.

Who never meddles with a charm,
Or if he did could do no harm. 59

Our caterers of publick taste
Are always found correct and chaste;
Were never known, for paltry cash
To poison people with their trash.

'Tis true the genius and the dunce
They'd put upon a par at once,
Did not the shrew'd, sharp sighted elves
Prefer the picture of themselves;-

But such a sympathy controls
All animals of kindred souls,

That, give them an unbiass'd choice,
The genuine dunce will have their voice :-

But then I will maintain, in spite
Of all that you can say, they're right,

59 Or if he did could do no harm.

We believe that Dr. Johnson expressed an idea similar to that contained in the above stanza, relative to the propriety of employing none but illiterate men in the trade of selling books. If so, it shows the wonderful parallelism of two great men.

And always should maintain a balance 'Gainst men of learning and of talents.

'Tis evident that real knowledge
Can have no business out of college,
And we should print, 'tis plain enough,
For common people common stuff.

These my fine fellows know full well That books are merely made to sell, That half the world will only prize The print, the paper, and the size :

That men of fashion 'tis agreed,
Conceive it quizzical to read,
But set their books up in a row
Merely to make a splendid show;-

That, if 'tis rightly understood
Your library's not made of wood,
'Tis unpolite to take the pains
To look at what a shelf contains.

To set our people up in trade
We next a set of authors made
Whom you might reasonably hire
To soil white paper by the quire.

We order'd these to starve, in case,
They did not scrawl a dog trot pace,
Or spin with wonderful tenuity
Your diplomatick ambiguity. 6

60 They did not scrawl a dog trot pace.

60

Our capital merchants are in the habit of giving orders to our capital booksellers for books by the gross, pound weight, or square foot ; but never trouble themselves about the quality of the articles. Hence the author who can produce the greatest quantity of matter in a given period of time, is the man for a capital bookseller.

61 Your diplomatick ambiguity.

We have two or three high official characters in this country, who are determined never to commit themselves, on paper, unless it should be conceived criminal to write what it is impossible to comprehend. They take their cue from a certain Frenchman, mentioned by the author of the Pursuits of Literature, * who says, "Je ne veux point admettre dans les arrêts de Conseil un vrai trivial un clartè trop familiare. Je veux un vrai de recherche, une clartè elegante, une naiveté fine, toute brillante de termes pompeux, relevés inopinément de phrases arrondies, de vocatifs intermediaires et d' adverbes indéfinis.† Our celebrated Mr. Madison's official writings seem to have been the product of a private secretary, who was one of our kind of authors.

* See Pursuits of Literature, p. 362. American edition.

† I would not allow the admission of a trivial truth in the decrees of council, or a clearness which is too easy and familiar. I choose to have a subtle kind of truth, an elegant perspicuity, a natural manner, but not wholly without art, set off with words of pomp, unexpectedly raised with a roundness of phraseology, with intermediate vocatives, and indefinite adverbs.

We likewise set machines a going
As booksellers, who're wondrous knowing,
And made them heads like Buonpart's,
But then forgot to give them hearts.

We form'd most mighty combinations
Among these chaps, and their relations;
Caus'd them to swear, in any weather
That they would sink or swim together.

E'en gave them, lest they run ashore,
Such wonderful esprit de corps,
That, but offend their meanest noddy
And they'll attack you in a body.

These men well paid us for the rearing,
In jacobinick pamphleteering;
Have gain'd us thousands in a season,
By peddling Tom Paine's Age of Reason.

With such machines, on mischief bent

We can o'erturn a government,
Root up society's foundations
And kindle war among all nations. 62

62 And kindle war among all nations.

These men were the disciples of Illuminism, were