Page:The Dunciad - Alexander Pope (1743).djvu/36



Cannot but think it the most reasonable thing in the world, to distinguish good writers, by discouraging the bad. Nor is it an ill-natured thing, in relation even to the very persons upon whom the reflections are made. It is true, it may deprive them, a little the sooner, of a short profit and a transitory reputation; but then it may have a good effect, and oblige them (before it be too late) to decline that for which they are so very unfit, and to have recourse to something in which they may be more successful.

THE Persons whom Boileau has attacked in his writings, have been for the most part Authors, and most of those Authors, Poets: And the censures he hath passed upon them have been confirmed by all Europe.

IT is the common cry of the Poetasters of the town, and their fautors, that it is an ill-natured thing to expose the Pretenders to wit and poetry. The Judges and Magistrates may with full as good reason be reproached with Ill-nature for putting the Laws in Rh