LETTER LXXI.

Berlin.

I thank you, Sir, for the poem and pamphlets you sent me by ——. I own I do not think the former a very capital performance; yet am not surprised at the great run it has had. For though it had contained still a smaller proportion of wit, it would have been a good deal relished on account of the malignity and personal abuse with which it abounds.

The English nation have always had a great appetite for political writings; but those who cater for them have of late served up such messes of mere politics, as seem at length to have turned their stomachs. A little wit or personal satire is now found necessary to make even a newspaper go down. The first is not always at the command of the caterer: he therefore uses the other in its place, which answers his purpose as well.

I never had any delight in contemplating or exposing the dark side of human nature; but there are some shades so obvious, that you cannot open your eyes without observing them. The satisfaction that many people enjoy in reading libels, wherein private characters are traduced, is of that number. If to be abused in pamphlets and news-papers is considered as adversity, the truth of Rochefoucault’s maxim is uncontrovertible:—Dans l’adversité de nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons toujours quelquechose qui ne nous déplait pas.

The common scribblers of the age have turned to their own account this malevolent disposition, which they perceive to be so prevalent among men.—Like the people who provide bulls and other animals to be baited by dogs for the amusement of the spectators, these gentlemen turn out a few characters every week to be mangled and torn in the most cruel manner in the public news-papers.

It is the savage taste of those who pay for these amusements, which keeps them in use. The writers of scurrilous books in London often bear no more malice to the individuals they abuse, than the people at Paris and Vienna, who provide the other horrid amusement, bear to the boars, bulls, and other animals which they expose to the fury of dogs.

As for the scribblers, they seldom have any knowledge of the persons whose characters they attack. It is far from being impossible, that the author of the severe verses you sent me, has no more acquaintance with the lords and gentlemen against whom he writes with such bitterness, than the weaver who wove their pocket-handkerchiefs. The motive for the fabrication of the one as well as the other commodity most probably was daily bread, and this poetaster has preferred satire to panegyric, merely because he knew the first was most to the taste of his customers.

I remember once to have been in a certain bookseller’s shop, when a letter was delivered to him, inclosing a paper, which, after he had thrown his eyes over it, he presented to me, telling me it was a character of Lord S——, which he intended to insert in a certain work then publishing.—I fancy, added he, it will do pretty well; the author is a sharp blade, I assure you;—none of my boys carry such an edge, or cut so deep, as that little gladiator.

I found this a most bitter invective against the above-mentioned nobleman, written with all the inveteracy of malice and personal enmity, branding him as a prodigy of sensuality, and accusing him of every villanous disposition and propensity that ever tainted the most corrupt heart.

This, said I, is a much more harmless production than is intended. The violence of this poison will prove its own antidote. The most voracious stomach for slander and defamation will not be able to bear such a dose, but must reject it with disgust. Every reader of common understanding will clearly perceive, that all this abuse has been dictated by malice and personal resentment.

Then, replied the bookseller, every reader of common understanding will clearly perceive what does not exist; for the writer of that paper, to my certain knowledge, never had the smallest intercourse or connection with Lord S——; never bore him any ill-will, and has not the most distant wish to injure that noble Lord; as a proof of which, added he, taking another paper out of his drawer, here is a character of the same nobleman, written by the same author, which is to appear about a week after the publication of the former, by way of answer to it.

This second paper was a continued eulogium on Lord S—— from beginning to end, in which the candid author, having compared him to some of the greatest and most celebrated men, and having collected many of the brightest flowers, with which Plutarch has adorned his worthies, he forms them into one large wreath, which he very seriously binds round the English nobleman’s brow, concluding with this observation. That as his Lordship resembled them in their virtues, so like them he had been distinguished by the most virulent attacks of envy and malice, which was a tax that had always been paid for superior talents.

How comes my Lord S——, said I to the bookseller, to be selected from his brethren of the peerage, and distinguished so remarkably by the obloquy and the praise of your ingenious friend?

Because, replied he, that nobleman is at the head of an active department, and is one of those vigorous and decisive characters, which never fail to create a number of enemies and of friends. His enemies are delighted to see him abused, and it is expected, that his friends will be charmed to hear him praised; and, between the two, my friend’s productions will find a brisk sale, and I hope to make a tolerable job of his Lordship; which, let me tell you, cannot be done with every man of rank.—Lord, Sir! there are some of them of such mawkish, water-gruel characters, as to interest no mortal. There is ——, a man of such high rank and such a known name, that I thought something might have been made of him:—And so I employed my little Drawcansir for and against him, and two very pretty pamphlets he produced;—but just as I was going to send them to the press, I happened to shew them to a friend of mine, who is an admirable judge in these matters.—These pamphlets, says he, are very well wrote; but they’ll never pay the printing. The person who is the subject of them is of such a cold, tame, civil, cautious disposition, and has balanced so exactly through the whole of his life, that he has never obliged or disobliged any one. He has neither friend nor foe in the world:—Every body says, he is a good enough sort of a man; but were he to break his neck to-night, no human creature would feel either sorrow or satisfaction at the event, and a satire or panegyric on his grandmother would be as much read as those written on him.

In faith, sir, concluded the Bookseller, I took the hint, and so the pamphlets never appeared.

Though I was a good deal entertained with my friend the Bookseller’s reasoning, yet I could not help feeling indignation at the literary bravo, who lived in this infamous manner, by wounding and murdering, or at least attempting to murder, people’s reputations. And those are not entirely free from blame, who detesting the writer, take pleasure in the writings. He has very possibly the plea of necessitous circumstances to urge in alleviation of his wickedness:—but the pleasure they take seems to proceed from a pure, disinterested fondness of seeing others abused. Many of those who cry shame on the licentiousness of the press, and exclaim against the injustice and cruelty of tearing private characters to pieces in public papers, have the most virulent of these productions served up every morning as regularly as their toast and butter. If they would forego the pleasure of reading the most malicious of those compositions, the evil they complain of would cease directly.

But it is ridiculous, and seems ungrateful, for people to affect an appearance of indignation against those who provide for them one of the greatest enjoyments of their lives. To chuckle over scandal all the forenoon with every mark of pleasure, and decry it in the evening with affected anger, is as preposterous as it would be in a judge, first to seduce a poor wench to fornication, and then punish her for the sin.

You may possibly retort upon me, by putting me in mind of the admiration I expressed of the style of certain celebrated letters, wherein some eminent characters are dissected, and tortured with the scientific skill of an anatomist, and the refined cruelty of an inquisitor. I answer, that I admired the wit and genius, but not the disposition displayed in those letters.

Malice, when introduced by genius and wit, is often tolerated on account of the respect due to the introducers; but when the wretch comes alone, or is accompanied by dulness, which often happens, she will be expelled with infamy from all good company.