It is not that you
are under any force of working daily miracles to prove your being,
but now and then somewhat of extraordinary--that is, anything of
your production--is requisite to refresh your character.
This, I think, my lord, is a sufficient reproach to you, and should
I carry it as far as mankind would authorise me, would be little
less than satire. And indeed a provocation is almost necessary, in
behalf of the world, that you might be induced sometimes to write;
and in relation to a multitude of scribblers, who daily pester the
world with their insufferable stuff, that they might be discouraged
from writing any more. I complain not of their lampoons and libels,
though I have been the public mark for many years. I am vindictive
enough to have repelled force by force if I could imagine that any
of them had ever reached me: but they either shot at rovers, and
therefore missed; or their powder was so weak that I might safely
stand them at the nearest distance. I answered not the "Rehearsal"
because I knew the author sat to himself when he drew the picture,
and was the very Bayes of his own farce; because also I knew that my
betters were more concerned than I was in that satire; and, lastly,
because Mr.
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