Page:The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell (1833).djvu/290

162 fond of detraction; that envy, which made him choose so excellent a character for its object; and those partial methods of injustice with which he treated the object he had chosen.

Yet how many commence critics after him, upon the same unhappy principles? How many labour to destroy the monuments of the dead, and summon up the great from their graves to answer for trifles before them? How many, by misrepresentations, both hinder the world from favouring men of genius, and discourage them in themselves; like boughs of a baneful and barren nature, that shoot across a fruit tree; at once to screen the sun from it, and hinder it by their droppings from producing anything of value? But if these who thus follow Zoilus, meet not the same severities of fate, because they come short of his indefatigable ness, or their object is not so universally the concern of mankind, they shall nevertheless meet a proportion of it in the inward trouble they give themselves, and the outward contempt others fling upon them: a punishment which every one has hitherto felt, who has really deserved to be called a Zoilus; and which will always be the natural reward of such men's actions, as long as Zoilus is the proper name of envy.