pass them as current coin in the marts of garrulity or detraction.

Praises of the unworthy are felt by ardent minds as robberies of the
deserving; and it is too true, and too frequent, that Bacon,
Harrington, Machiavel, and Spinoza, are not read, because Hume,
Condillac, and Voltaire are. But in promiscuous company no prudent man
will oppugn the merits of a contemporary in his own supposed
department; contenting himself with praising in his turn those whom he
deems excellent. If I should ever deem it my duty at all to oppose the
pretensions of individuals, I would oppose them in books which could
be weighed and answered, in which I could evolve the whole of my
reasons and feelings, with their requisite limits and modifications;
not in irrecoverable conversation, where however strong the reasons
might be, the feelings that prompted them would assuredly be
attributed by some one or other to envy and discontent. Besides I well
know, and, I trust, have acted on that knowledge, that it must be the
ignorant and injudicious who extol the unworthy; and the eulogies of
critics without taste or judgment are the natural reward of authors
without feeling or genius. Sint unicuique sua praemia.

How then, dismissing, as I do, these three causes, am I to account for
attacks, the long continuance and inveteracy of which it would require
all three to explain? The solution seems to be this,--I was in habits
of intimacy with Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. Southey! This, however,
transfers, rather than removes the difficulty. Be it, that, by an
unconscionable extension of the old adage, noscitur a socio, my
literary friends are never under the water-fall of criticism, but I
must be wet through with the spray; yet how came the torrent to
descend upon them?