Literary Hardships of practical Authors. W 
fest injustice may have been done or attempted, on the charaeter 
of works, whose Authors or their personal friends, can no longer 
defend their writings, either as to the knowledge possessed by 
the writers, or, as to the honesty, ability or care,with which their 
sentiments were given. 
In most instances, a feeling towards the support of undefended 
merit, as last mentioned, issufficiently strong, to counteract and 
expose the impreper designs or conduct of recent writers; but a 
ase sometimes occurs, in which a person, not professedly a li- 
terary character, composes a Work, towards the close of his life, 
containing the resuits of his own laborious researches and ex- 
perience, including perhaps, those of some of his friends also, in 
some practicable art or useful science, the details and principles 
of which he may have gone further fn developing, than was cur- 
rent at the time, among the professed writers and Book-makers, 
who were his contemporaries, and immediate successors: and 
perhaps this person, may happen also, to adopt the expedient, at 
ail times a hazardous one, cf being the publisher of his own work, 
by subscription, without transferring to a regular publishing and 
advertizing Bookseller, any permanent interest in its literary 
success or general sale: in such last ease, it is not tmcommon, 
that the Writer. should be able to print and give circulation only 
to a limited number of copies, just sufficient to make his work 
somewhat known, and began to be inquired after, when the 
Author is deceased and the work oud of print, as is said, and no 
longer to be procured, but accidentally in. the shops of second- 
hand Booksellers. 
After a period of frequent inquiries for a book of the above 
description, it happens that some publishing Bookseller, with 
or without the knowledge or concurrence of the surviving rela- 
tives of the deceased Author, if he has any, entertains the design, 
of printing a new Edition of the Book, which seems thus in re- 
quest ; and in order to secure the chance of a more extended sale, 
instead of searching for any surviving friends of the deceased, 
who may be engaged in the same line of pursuit, or other per- 
sons practised therein, who could supply the illustrative notes or 
additions, which the further progress of knowledge since the first. 
printing, may have shown to be necessary, in the opinions of such 
persons, as were fully conversant in the practical pursuits and views 
of the Author, and had visited the places he may have locally de- 
scribed, and attempting no further alteration of his work :—more 
probably,some learned Professor is sought for and engaged, in order 
to give éclat to the matter, by his own splendid additions to the 
new and revised Edition: these additions being perhaps, of a 
kind, very different from, and very inferior perhaps, in point. of 
H3 cou- 
