men, until fact or argument be offered to convince
you of your error. One writer praises another;
and it is very possible for writers so to combine
as to cry down and, in some sort, to destroy the reputation
of any one who meddles with the combination, unless
the person thus assailed be blessed with uncommon
talent and uncommon perseverance. When I read
the works of POPE and of SWIFT, I was greatly delighted
with their lashing of DENNIS; but wondered, at the
same time, why they should have taken so much pains
in running down such a fool. By the merest
accident in the world, being at a tavern in the woods
of America, I took up an old book, in order to pass
away the time while my travelling companions were drinking
in the next room; but seeing the book contained the
criticisms of DENNIS, I was about to lay it down,
when the play of ‘CATO’ caught my eye;
and having been accustomed to read books in which
this play was lauded to the skies, and knowing it
to have been written by ADDISON, every line of whose
works I had been taught to believe teemed with wisdom
and genius, I condescended to begin to read, though
the work was from the pen of that fool DENNIS.
I read on, and soon began to laugh, not at Dennis,
but at Addison. I laughed so much and so loud,
that the landlord, who was in the passage, came in
to see what I was laughing at. In short, I found
it a most masterly production, one of the most witty
things that I had ever read in my life. I was
delighted with DENNIS, and was heartily ashamed of
my former admiration of CATO, and felt no little resentment
against POPE and SWIFT for their endless reviling of
this most able and witty critic. This, as far
as I recollect, was the first emancipation
that had assisted me in my reading. I have, since
that time, never taken any thing upon trust:
I have judged for myself, trusting neither to the
opinions of writers nor in the fashions of the day.
Having been told by DR. BLAIR, in his lectures on
Rhetoric, that, if I meant to write correctly, I must
‘give my days and nights to ADDISON,’ I
read a few numbers of the Spectator at the time I
was writing my English Grammar: I gave neither
my nights nor my days to him; but I found an abundance
of matter to afford examples of false grammar;
and, upon a reperusal, I found that the criticisms
of DENNIS might have been extended to this book too.
77. But that which never ought to have been forgotten by those who were men at the time, and that which ought to be made known to every young man of the present day, in order that he may be induced to exercise his own judgment with regard to books, is, the transactions relative to the writings of SHAKSPEARE, which transactions took place about thirty years ago. It is still, and it was then much more, the practice to extol every line of SHAKSPEARE to the skies: not to admire SHAKSPEARE has been deemed to be a proof of want of understanding and taste. MR. GARRICK,