Page:Catalogue of five hundred celebrated authors of Great Britain, now living (1788).djvu/4

iv and leading us to be too easily satisfied with the first efforts of performance. We therefore assume no other praise, than that of a lucky hit; than that we were lead by propitious destiny to a theme, which, if it had occurred before, would long since have been made the prey of fifty hungry scribblers.

We believe, and we hope our readers will thank us for the intelligence, that the world is continually growing wiser. There was a time, when nobody would read a book that had not been written half a century; and when, while antiquity shaded with her laurels the urns of authors already crumbled into dust, an Otway was suffered to starve upon a bulk, and Dryden could hardly find a grave. The world is now better disposed to do justice to living merit. Some of the great geniuses of the present day are revenged before hand, by the idolatry of their contemporaries, for the neglect they will experience from posterity; and