deed, and would require very mature examination. When any perfon prefent fays the point is very eafy, takes it in hand, and folves it to the fatisfaction of every body, the hypocrite of learning fhakes his head, fays that folution is trivial; and perhaps is polite enough to hint that it equals the understanding of the audience; but that he upon proper occafion, and to a learned company, could have given a much more profound account of the matter.

You cannot imagine, my dear friend, what an important thing a fhake of the head is. It makes a man look fo wife! I have known people get fame, pleasure, opulence, only by fhaking their heads; tho, God knows, to use a trite witticism, there was nothing in them. A shake of the head from an ignorant man is learning; from a mean man, greatness; from a dull man, wit; from a ftupid man, genius; from a poor man, wealth; from a fool, wifdom. I wonder no wit fhould have written a treatise On the art of shaking the head. It were furely capable of much illuftration; and no writer need be ashamed of handling it, when he hath the example of Mr. Addison before him,

him, who hath written at some length On the art of furling the fan, an inftrument of equal ventofity. But, least you should be shaking your head at me all this while, I fhall here close my Letter,

LETTER

LETTER LIV,

HAVE heard it feriously debated in conversation that it is impoffible for any writer to obtain a false fame, and that celebrity must ever be the fruit of fome proportionable merit. This opinion, as falfe as it is plaufible, deferves a confutation at fome length from its important confequences to the interefts of lite

rature,

THE fame of a good writer refembles the defcent of a pyramid, most minute at first, but fwelling to an enormous bafe, which ftands firm as the earth, and defies every tempeft, and even the filent waste of time. Falfe fame resembles the pyramid likewise in every thing but its durability; but in another view, for it rifes from a broad bafe, and tapers to nothing.. Hence that applause, which is wide at first, is very feldom lafting; and durable reputation almost always fprings from very minute beginnings.

Α

A good writer is feldom or never popular at first. His ideas are fo much out of the common line, that he is not understood, much lefs tafted, by the mob of his day. True judges, men of real science, are always his first admirers from congeniality of mind; and his fame, when fwelled to a vaft river, is yet of the utmost purity, because its scources are clear. The applause of true judges is the only living fame which a writer of true taste can relish. When popular acclamation rifes around him, he will be ready to fay; with that ancient Greek, upon hearing an unexpected roar of praise from the populace, whom he was addreffing; Have I faid a foolish thing?

THE opinion of men of learning always leads the mob, when it hath had a proper period to operate: the opinion of the mob is feldom or never that of men of learning; and in no inftance can lead it.

THE fame of the most fuperlative writers is, even after thousands of years, always confined to fuperior minds: the popular acclaim is only an unmeaning echo of it. Du Bos hath well obferved

3

obferved that the true reputation of Homer is at this day confined to those who can read and admire him in the original; perhaps amounting to two hundred perfons in the world: his other pretended admirers difgrace his genuine fame, and are the mere babbling echoes of the former.

THE like may be faid of every superlative writer. Is Pindar, is Tacitus the minion of the populace? Our own Milton, our Shakspere univerfal as he is, are not understood, or the leaft relished, by one perfon in a thoufand who echo their celebrity with open mouth. Were the genuine fentiments of the million enquired into, it would be difcovered that any fashionable bauble of the diurnal kind is of far more estimation, in their fight, that the immortal labours of these glorious writers. What is the use of diamonds to them? Can they eat them? No, with the cock in the fable, grains of corn were better; and where corn is not to be had, even chaff.

BUT before the breeze of time that chaff vanishes while diamonds remain and blaze to

eternity.

MEN