The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

132 TOBIAS SMOLLETT
flattered him in private, and engaged his adversaries in public; and
yet I was astonished, when I recollected that I often had seen this
writer virulently abused in papers, poems, and pamphlets, and not
a pen was drawn in his defence.—‘But you will be more astonished
(said he) when I assure you, those very guests whom you saw at his
table to-day, were the authors of great part of that abuse; and he
himself is well aware of their particular favours, for they are all
eager to detect and betray one another.’—‘But this is doing the
devil’s work for nothing (cried I). What should induce them to
revile their benefactor without provocation?’ ‘Envy (answered
Dick) is the general incitement; but they are galled by an addi-
tional scourge of provocation. S—— directs a literary journal, in
which their productions are necessarily brought to trial; and though
many of them have been treated with such lenity and favour as they
little deserved, yet the slightest censure, such as, perhaps, could not
be avoided with any pretensions to candour and impartiality, has
rankled in the hearts of those authors to such a degree, that they
have taken immediate vengeance on the critic in anonymous libels,
letters, and lampoons. Indeed, all the writers of the age, good, bad,
and indifferent, from the moment he assumed this office, became
his enemies, either professed or in petto, except those of his friends
who knew they had nothing to fear from his strictures; and he must
be a wiser man than me, who can tell what advantage or satisfaction
he derives from having brought such a nest of hornets about his
ears.’
I owned, that was a point which might deserve consideration;
but still I expressed a desire to know his real motives for con-
tinuing his friendship to a set of rascals equally ungrateful and in-
significant.—He said, he did not pretend to assign any reasonable
motive; that, if the truth must be told, the man was, in point of
conduct, a most incorrigible fool; that, though he pretended to
have a knack at hitting off characters, he blundered strangely in the
distribution of his favours, which were generally bestowed on the
most undeserving of those who had recourse to his assistance; that,
indeed, this preference was not so much owing to want of dis-
cernment as to want of resolution, for he had not fortitude enough
to resist the importunity even of the most worthless; and, as he
did not know the value of money, there was very little merit in part-
ing with it so easily; that his pride was gratified in seeing himself
courted by such a number of literary dependants; that, probably,