This expedient, which I hope will be carefully concealed from the vulgar, must infallibly answer the great end proposed by it, and set the power of the court not only above the insults of the poets, but, in a short time, above the necessity of providing against them.  The licenser, having his authority thus extended, will, in time, enjoy the title and the salary without the trouble of exercising his power, and the nation will rest, at length, in ignorance and peace.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] This admirable piece of irony was first printed in the year 1739.  A
    comparison of its sarcastic strokes with the serious arguments of
    lord Chesterfield’s speech in the house of lords against the bill
    for licensing the stage, will be both amusing and instructive.—­Ed.

[2] Lyttelton and Pitt.

[3] Britain

[4] Titles of pamphlets published at this juncture.  The former by lord
    Lyttelton.  See his works, vol i.

PREFACE TO THE GENTLEMAN’S MAGAZINE,

1738.

The usual design of addresses of this sort is to implore the candour of the publick:  we have always had the more pleasing province of returning thanks, and making our acknowledgments for the kind acceptance which our monthly collections have met with.

This, it seems, did not sufficiently appear from the numerous sale and repeated impressions of our books, which have, at once, exceeded our merit and our expectation; but have been still more plainly attested by the clamours, rage, and calumnies of our competitors, of whom we have seldom taken any notice, not only because it is cruelty to insult the depressed, and folly to engage with desperation, but because we consider all their outcries, menaces, and boasts, as nothing more than advertisements in our favour, being evidently drawn up with the bitterness of baffled malice and disappointed hope; and almost discovering, in plain terms, that the unhappy authors have seventy thousand London Magazines mouldering in their warehouses, returned from all parts of the kingdom, unsold, unread, and disregarded.

Our obligations for the encouragement we have so long continued to receive, are so much the greater, as no artifices have been omitted to supplant us.  Our adversaries cannot be denied the praise of industry; how far they can be celebrated for an honest industry, we leave to the decision of the publick, and even of their brethren, the booksellers, not including those whose advertisements they obliterated to paste their invectives in our book.