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own indulged habit or private defetfl. Pope dwells on the 

 poverty of his rivals, becaufe it was his prudence and his pride 

 to have acquired a competence ; while mofl other poets difclofe 

 and commend their poverty by inveighing againfl the ignorance 

 of the great who do not reward their talents, or by frequent, 

 and vehement declamation againft a love of that wealth they. 

 never have poffefled. 



Authors fometimes make their works dire(5l: channels for 

 the conveyance of their charadler and hiftory to the public. 

 Thus Milton tells us of his blindnefs ; Virgil puts a narrative 

 of his own fortunes into the mouth of his fhepherd Tityrus ; 

 Swift, in his Cadenus and Vaneffa, is known to have intended 

 a juftification of hlmfelf againfl a mifreprefented flory ; and 

 Savage celebrates the talents and apologizes for the profligacy 

 of the baftard. I am fometimes inclined to fufpe<5l authors of 

 prefenting direcflly their own pidlures to the reader. Smollet 

 certainly did this in his charadler of Bramble, making at the 

 fame time fome of the fadls recorded in his travels the inci- 

 dents in his novel. Dr. Johnfon has given us at full length 

 the portrait of a Mr. Johnfon, an imaginary member of a li- 

 terary club, as drawn by Blackmore in the firft effay of an 

 unfuccefsful periodical work. I fufpecSt this extraordinary quo- 

 tation has been made, that the reader may be furprifed into a 

 comparifon of the great qualities of the biographer himfelf 

 with thofe which Blackmore, as if by a fort of projihetic fecond. 

 fight, had bellowed on his gigantic Johnfon. 



Thus 



