and pray remember that I must have two Latin seditious mottoes, and one Greek moral motto, for pamphlets, by to-morrow morning.

Quib. I want two Latin sentences, sir, one for page the fourth, in the praise of loyalty, and another for page the tenth, in praise of liberty and property.

Dash. The ghost would become a motto very well, if you would bestow one on him.

Book. Let me have them all.

Ind. Sir, I shall provide them. Be pleased to look on that, sir, and print me five hundred proposals, and as many receipts.

Book. "Proposals for printing by Subscription a New Translation of Cicero, of the Nature of the Gods, and his Tusculan Questions, by Jeremy Index, Esq." I am sorry you have undertaken this, for it prevents a design of mine.

Ind. Indeed, sir, it does not; for you see all of the book that I ever intend to publish. It is only a handsome way of asking one's friends for a guinea.

Book. Then you have not translated a word of it, perhaps?

İnd. Not a single syllable.

Book. Well, you shall have your proposals forthwith; but I desire you would be a little more rea ́sonable in your bills for the future, or I shall deal with you no longer; for I have a certain fellow of a college, who offers to furnish me with secondhand mottoes out of the Spectator for two-pence each.

Ind. Sir, I only desire to live by my goods, and I hope you will be pleased to allow some difference between a neat fresh piece, piping hot out of the Classics, and old, thread-bare, worn-out stuff, that

has passed through every pedant's mouth. (Enter SCARECROW.)

Scare. Sir, I have brought you a libel against the ministry.

Book. Sir, I shall not take any thing against them; for I have two in the press already (Aside.) Scare. Then, sir, I have an Apology in defence of them.

Book. That I shall not meddle with neither; they don't sell so well.

Scare. I have a translation of Virgil's Eneid, with notes on it, if we can agree about the price. Book. Why, what price would you have?

Scare. You shall read it first, otherwise how will you know the value?

Book. No, no, sir, I never deal that way: a poem is a poem, and a pamphlet a pamphlet with me. Give me a good handsome large volume, with a full promising title-page at the head of it, printed on a good paper and letter, the whole well bound and gilt, and I'll warrant its selling-You have the common error of authors, who think people buy books to read-No, no, books are only bought to furnish libraries, as pictures and glasses, and beds and chairs, are for other rooms. Look ye, sir, I don't like your title-page; however, to oblige a young beginner, I don't care if I do print it at my

own expense.

Scare. But pray, sir, at whose expense shall I eat?

Book. At whose? Why, at mine, sir, at mine. I am as great a friend to learning, as the Dutch are to trade: no one can want bread with me who will earn it; therefore, sir, if you please to take your seat at my table, here will be every thing necessary provided for you: good milk porridge,

1

very often twice a day, which is good wholesome food, and proper for students: a translator too is what I want at present; my last being in Newgate for shop-lifting. The rogue had a trick of translating out of the shops as well as the languages.

Scare. But I am afraid I am not qualified for a translator, for I understand no language but my

own.

Book. What, and translate Virgil ?

Scare. Alas! I translated him out of Dryden. Book. Lay by your hat, sir, lay by your hat, and take your seat immediately. Not qualified! thou art as well versed in thy trade, as if thou hadst laboured in my garret these ten years. Let me tell you, friend, you will have more occasion for invention than learning here. You will be obliged to translate books out of all languages, especially French, that were never printed in any language whatsoever.

Scare. Your trade abounds in mysteries.

Book. The study of bookselling is as difficult as the law; and there are as many tricks in the one as the other. Sometimes we give a foreign name to our own labours, and sometimes we put our names to the labours of others. Then as the lawyers have John-a-Nokes and Tom-a-Stilus, so we have Messieurs Moore near St. Paul's, and Smith near the Royal Exchange.

FIELDING.

A PROPER CHOICE OF BOOKS.

THE present age seems pretty well agreed in an opinion, that the utmost scope and end of reading is amusement only; and such, indeed, are now the fashionable books, that a reader can propose no

more than mere entertainment, and it is sometimes very well for him if he finds even this in his studies.

Letters, however, were sure intended for a much more noble and profitable purpose than this. Writers are not, I presume, to be considered as mere jack-puddings, whose business it is only to excite laughter; this, indeed, may sometimes be intermixed and served up with graver matters, in order to titillate the palate, and to recommend wholesome food to the mind; and, for this purpose, it hath been used by many excellent authors; "for why," as Horace says, "should not every one promulgate truth with a smile on his countenance? Ridicule, indeed," as he again intimates, "is commonly a stronger and better method of attacking vice than the severer kind of satire."

When wit and humour are introduced for such good purposes, when the agreeable is blended with the useful, then is the writer said to have succeeded in every point. Pleasantry (as the ingenious author of Clarissa says of a story) should be made only the vehicle of instruction; and in this way romances themselves, as well as epic poems, may become worthy the perusal of the greatest of men; but when no moral, no lesson, no instruction, is conveyed to the reader, where the whole design of the composition is no more than to make us laugh, the writer comes very near to the character of a buffoon, and his admirers, if an old Latin proverb be truc, deserve no great compliments to be paid to their wisdom.

After what I have here advanced, I cannot fairly, I think, be represented as an enemy to laughter, or to all those kinds of writing that are apt to promote it. On the contrary, few men, I believe, do

more admire the works of those great masters who have sent their satire (if I may use the expression) laughing into the world. Such are that great triumvirate, Lucian, Cervantes, and Swift. These authors I shall ever hold in the highest degree of esteem; not, indeed, for that wit and humour alone which they all so eminently possessed, but because they all endeavoured, with the utmost force of wit and humour, to expose and extirpate those follies and vices which chiefly prevailed in their several countries.

I would not be thought to confine wit and humour to these writers. Shakspeare, Moliere, and some other authors, have been blessed with the same talents, and have employed them to the same purposes. There are some, however, who, though not void of these talents, have made so wretched a use of them, that, had the consecration of their labours been committed to the hands of the hangman, no good man would have regretted their loss; nor am I afraid to mention Rabelais and Aristophanes himself in this number. For if I inay speak my opinion freely of these two last writers, and of their works, their design appears to me very plainly to have been to ridicule all sobriety, modesty, decency, virtue, and religion, out of the world. Now, whoever reads over the five great writers first mentioned in this paragraph, must either have a very bad head, or a very bad heart, if he doth not become both a wiser and a better

man.

In the exercise of the mind, as well as in the exercise of the body, diversion is a secondary consideration, and designed only to make that agreeable which is at the same time useful to such noble purposes as health and wisdom; but what should