Distant may the period be, but whenever the time shall come, when all
his works shall be collected by some editor worthy to be his
biographer, I trust that an appendix of excerpta of all the passages,
in which his writings, name, and character have been attacked, from
the pamphlets and periodical works of the last twenty years, may be an
accompaniment. Yet that it would prove medicinal in after times I dare
not hope; for as long as there are readers to be delighted with
calumny, there will be found reviewers to calumniate. And such readers
will become in all probability more numerous, in proportion as a still
greater diffusion of literature shall produce an increase of
sciolists, and sciolism bring with it petulance and presumption. In
times of old, books were as religious oracles; as literature advanced,
they next became venerable preceptors; they then descended to the rank
of instructive friends; and, as their numbers increased, they sank
still lower to that of entertaining companions; and at present they
seem degraded into culprits to hold up their hands at the bar of every
self-elected, yet not the less peremptory, judge, who chooses to write
from humour or interest, from enmity or arrogance, and to abide the
decision "of him that reads in malice, or him that reads after
dinner."

The same retrograde movement may be traced, in the relation which the
authors themselves have assumed towards their readers. From the lofty
address of Bacon: "these are the meditations of Francis of Verulam,
which that posterity should be possessed of, he deemed their
interest:" or from dedication to Monarch or Pontiff, in which the
honour given was asserted in equipoise to the patronage acknowledged:
from Pindar's

------'ep' alloi-