Yet sure, upon the whole, a bad author deserves better usage than a bad
critic; for a writer's endeavour, for the most part, is to please his
readers, and he fails merely through the misfortune of an ill judgment;
but such a critic's is to put them out of humour,--a design he could
never go upon without both that and an ill temper.
I think a good deal may be said to extenuate the fault of bad poets.
What we call a genius, is hard to be distinguished by a man himself from
a strong inclination: and if his genius be ever so great, he cannot at
first discover it any other way than by giving way to that prevalent
propensity which renders him the more liable to be mistaken. The only
method he has is to make the experiment by writing, and appealing to the
judgment of others: now if he happens to write ill (which is certainly
no sin in itself) he is immediately made an object of ridicule. I wish
we had the humanity to reflect, that even the worst authors might, in
their endeavour to please us, deserve something at our hands. We have no
cause to quarrel with them but for their obstinacy in persisting to
write; and this too may admit of alleviating circumstances. Their
particular friends may be either ignorant or insincere; and the rest of
the world in general is too well bred to shock them with a truth which
generally their booksellers are the first that inform them of.
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