state of society and social intercourse, language, mechanized as it
were into a barrel-organ, supplies at once both instrument and tune.
Thus even the deaf may play, so as to delight the many. Sometimes (for
it is with similes, as it is with jests at a wine table, one is sure
to suggest another) I have attempted to illustrate the present state
of our language, in its relation to literature, by a press-room of
larger and smaller stereotype pieces, which, in the present Anglo-
Gallican fashion of unconnected, epigrammatic periods, it requires but
an ordinary portion of ingenuity to vary indefinitely, and yet still
produce something, which, if not sense, will be so like it as to do as
well. Perhaps better: for it spares the reader the trouble of
thinking; prevents vacancy, while it indulges indolence; and secures
the memory from all danger of an intellectual plethora. Hence of all
trades, literature at present demands the least talent or information;
and, of all modes of literature, the manufacturing of poems. The
difference indeed between these and the works of genius is not less
than between an egg and an egg-shell; yet at a distance they both look
alike.

Now it is no less remarkable than true, with how little examination
works of polite literature are commonly perused, not only by the mass
of readers, but by men of first rate ability, till some accident or
chance [10] discussion have roused their attention, and put them on
their guard. And hence individuals below mediocrity not less in
natural power than in acquired knowledge; nay, bunglers who have
failed in the lowest mechanic crafts, and whose presumption is in due
proportion to their want of sense and sensibility; men, who being
first scribblers from idleness and ignorance, next become libellers
from envy and malevolence,--have been able to drive a successful trade
in the employment of the booksellers, nay, have raised themselves into