And yet, as there is no conduct so fair and disinterested, but
that it may be misunderstood by ignorance, and misrepresented by
malice, I have been sometimes tempted to preserve my own reputation at
the expense of my reader, and to transcribe the original, or at
least to quote chapter and verse, whenever I have made use either of
the thought or expression of another. I am, indeed, in some doubt that
I have often suffered by the contrary method; and that, by suppressing
the original author's name, I have been rather suspected of plagiarism
than reputed to act from the amiable motive assigned by that justly
celebrated Frenchman.
Now, to obviate all such imputations for the future, I do here
confess and justify the fact. The antients may be considered as a rich
common, where every person who hath the smallest tenement in Parnassus
hath a free right to fatten his muse. Or, to place it in a clear
light, we moderns are to the antients what the poor are to the rich.
By the poor here I mean that large and venerable body which, in
English, we call the mob. Now, whoever hath had the honour to be
admitted to any degree of intimacy with this mob, must well know
that it is one of their established maxims to plunder and pillage
their rich neighbours without any reluctance; and that this is held to
be neither sin nor shame among them. And so constantly do they abide
and act by this maxim, that, in every parish almost in the kingdom,
there is a kind of confederacy ever carrying on against a certain
person of opulence called the squire, whose property is considered
as free booty by all his poor neighbours; who, as they conclude that
there is no manner of guilt in such depredations, look upon it as a
point of honour and moral obligation to conceal, and to preserve
each other from punishment on all such occasions.
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