Sirs! if you damn me, you’ll resemble those
That flay’d the Traveller who had lost his clothes;
Are there not foes enough to do my books? 
Relentless trunk-makers and pastry-cooks? 
Acknowledge not those barbarous allies,
The wooden box-men, and the men of pies: 
For Heav’n’s sake, let it ne’er be understood
That you, great Censors! coalesce with wood;
Nor let your actions contradict your looks,
That tell the world you ne’er colleague with cooks.

But, if the blithe Muse will indulge a smile,
Why scowls thy brow, O Bookseller! the while? 
Thy sunk eyes glisten through eclipsing fears,
Fill’d, like Cassandra’s, with prophetic tears: 
With such a visage, withering, woe-begone,
Shrinks the pale poet from the damning dun. 
Come, let us teach each other’s tears to flow,
Like fasting bards, in fellowship of woe,
When the coy Muse puts on coquettish airs,
Nor deigns one line to their voracious prayers! 
Thy spirit, groaning like th’ encumber’d block
Which bears my works, deplores them as dead stock.
Doom’d by these undiscriminating times
To endless sleep, with Delia Cruscan rhymes;
Yes, Critics whisper thee, litigious wretches! 
Oblivion’s hand shall finish all my sketches.
But see, my soul, such bug-bears has repell’d
With magnanimity unparallel’d! 
Take up the volume, every care dismiss,
And smile, gruff Gorgon! while I tell thee this: 
Not one shall lie neglected on the shelf,
All shall be sold—­I’ll buy them in myself!