Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1820. Excerpt:... critic. By all accounts, S is not without weakness and caprice; but he is certainly good-humoured and civilized: nor do I find, that there is any thing overbearing, cruel, or implacable in his disposition. I have dwelt so long upon authors, that you will perhaps suspect I intend to enrol myself among the fraternity: but if I were actually qualified for the profession, it is at best but a desperate resource against starving, as it affords no provision for old age and infirmity. Salmon, at the age of fourscore, is now in a garret, compiling matter, at a guinea a sheet, for a modern historian, who, in point of age, might be his grand-child; and Psalmanazar, after having drudged half a century in the literary mill, in all the simplicity and abstinence of an Asiatic, subsists upon the charity of a few booksellers, just sufficient to keep him from the parish. I think Guy, who was himself a bookseller, ought to have appropriated one wing or ward of his hospital to the use of decayed authors; though indeed there is neither hospital, college, nor work-house, within the bills of mortality, large enough to contain the poor of this society, composed, as it is, from the refuse of every other profession. I know not whether you will find any amusement in this account of an odd race of mortals, whose constitution had, I own, greatly interested the curiosity of Yours, London, June 10. j. MELFORD. TO MISS LiETITIA WILLIS, AT GLOUCESTER. My Dear Letty, There is something on my spirits, which I should not venture to communicate by the post; but having tbe opportunity of Mrs. Brentwood's return, I seize it eagerly to disburthen my poor heart, which is oppressed with fear and vexation. O Letty! what a miserable situation it is, to be without a friend to whom one can apply for...