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1

A man must serve his time to every trade
Save censure critics all are ready made.
Take hackney'd jokes from Miller, got by rote,
With just enough of learning to misquote;
A mind well skill'd to find or forge a fault;
A turn for punning, call it Attic salt;
To Jeffrey go, be silent and discreet,
His pay is just ten sterling pounds per sheet;
Fear not to lie, 'twill seem a lucky hit;
Shrink not from blasphemy, 'twill pass for wit;
Care not for feeling-pass your proper jest,
And stand a critic, hated yet caress'd.
BYRON-English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
L. 63.

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Blame where you must, be candid where you can, And be each critic the Good-natured Man. GOLDSMITH-The Good-Natured Man. Epilogue.

22

Reviewers are forever telling authors they can't understand them. The author might often reply: Is that my fault?

J. C. AND A. W. HARE-Guesses at Truth.

23

The readers and the hearers like my books,
And yet some writers cannot them digest;
But what care I? for when I make a feast,
I would my guests should praise it, not the cooks.
SIR JOHN HARRINGTON-Against Writers that
Carp at other Men's Books.

24

When Poets' plots in plays are damn'd for spite, They critics turn and damn the rest that write. JOHN HAYNES-Prologue. In Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany Poems. Ed. by ELIJAH FENTON.

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