endowed only with one of them, had their suitable posts. When this was over, there remained many places of trust and profit unfilled, for which there were fresh draughts made out of the surrounding multitude, who had any appearance of these excellencies, or were recommended by those who possessed them in reality.

All were surprised to see so many new faces in the most eminent dignities; and for my own part, I was very well pleased to see that all my friends either kept their present posts or were advanced to higher.

Having filled my paper with those particulars of my vision which concern the male part of mankind, I must reserve for another occasion the sequel of it, which relates to the fair sex.

The Tatler, No. 100.

Tuesday, November 29, 1709.

IV

Literary Pirates

-Postquam fregit subsellia versu

Esurit intactam Paridi nisi vendit Agaven.—Juv.

From my own Apartment, November 30. THE progress of my intended account of what happened when Justice visited mortals, is at present interrupted by the observation and sense of an injustice against which there is no remedy, even in a kingdom more happy in the care taken of the liberty and property of

the subject than any other nation upon earth. This iniquity is committed by a most impregnable set of mortals, men who are rogues within the law; and in the very commission of what they are guilty of, professedly own that they forbear no injury, but from the terror of being punished for it. These miscreants are a set of wretches we authors call pirates, who print any book, poem, or sermon, as soon as it appears in the world, in a smaller volume, and sell it, as all other thieves do stolen goods, at a cheaper rate. I was in my rage calling them rascals, plunderers, robbers, highwaymen. But they acknowledge all that, and are pleased with those, as well as any other titles; nay, will print them themselves to turn the penny.

I am extremely at a loss how to act against such open enemies, who have not shame enough to be touched with our reproaches, and are as well defended against what we can say as what we can do. Railing, therefore, we must turn into complaint, which I cannot forbear making, when I consider that all the labours of my long life may be disappointed by the first man that pleases to rob me. I had flattered myself that my stock of learning was worth a hundred and fifty pounds per annum, which would very handsomely maintain me and my little family, who are so happy, or so wise, as to want only necessaries. Before men had come up to this bare-faced impudence, it was an estate to have a competency of understanding.

An ingenious droll, who is since dead (and indeed it

is well for him he is so, for he must have starved had he lived to this day), used to give me an account of his good husbandry in the management of his learning. He was a general dealer, and had his amusements as well comical as serious. The merry rogue said, when he wanted a dinner, he writ a paragraph of Table Talk, and his bookseller upon sight paid the reckoning. He was a very good judge of what would please the people, and could aptly hit both the genius of his readers and the season of the year in his writings. His brain, which was his estate, had as regular and different produce as other men's land. From the beginning of November till the opening of the campaign he writ pamphlets and letters to members of parliament, or friends in the country; but sometimes he would relieve his ordinary readers with a murder, and lived comfortably a week or two upon strange and lamentable accidents.1 A little before the armies took the field, his way was to open your attention with a prodigy; and a monster well writ was two guineas the lowest price. This prepared his readers for great and bloody news from Flanders in June and July. Poor Tom! he is gone. But I observed, he always looked well after a battle, and was apparently fatter in a fighting year. Had this honest, careless fellow lived till now, famine had stared him in the face, and interrupted his merri

1 It is to be remembered that this paper, like most of Addison's essays, was written during the continuance of the long war with France, when, in accordance with old custom, armies regularly retired into winter quarters at the close of the summer and resumed operations in the spring.

ment; as it must be a solid affliction to all those whose pen is their portion.

As for my part, I do not speak wholly for my own sake in this point; for palmistry and astrology will bring me in greater gains than these my papers;1 so that I am only in the condition of a lawyer who leaves the bar for chamber practice. However, I may be allowed to speak in the cause of learning itself, and lament that a liberal education is the only one which a polite nation makes unprofitable. All mechanical artisans are allowed to reap the fruit of their invention and ingenuity without invasion; but he that has separated himself from the rest of mankind, and studied the wonders of the creation, the government of his passions, and the revolutions of the world, and has an ambition to communicate the effect of half his life spent in such noble inquiries, has no property in what he is willing to produce, but is exposed to robbery and want, with this melancholy and just reflection, that he is the only man who is not protected by his country, at the same time that he best deserves it.

According to the ordinary rules of computation, the greater the adventure is, the greater ought to be the profit of those who succeed in it; and by this measure, none have pretence of turning their labours to greater

1 The nominal author of The Tatler was a certain imaginary Isaac Bickerstaff, who eked out the precarious gains of pure literature by the much more solid resources of palmistry and astrology. From the present passage we learn that he wisely trusted for his daily bread rather to the ignorance and gullibility of the public than to their reason and sense.

advantage than persons brought up to letters. A learned education, passing through great schools and universities, is very expensive, and consumes a moderate fortune, before it is gone through in its proper forms. The purchase of an handsome commission or employment, which would give a man a good figure in another kind of life, is to be made at a much cheaper rate. Now, if we consider this expensive voyage which is undertaken in the search of knowledge, and how few there are who take in any considerable merchandise, how less frequent it is to be able to turn what men have gained into profit; how hard is it, that the very small number who are distinguished with abilities to know how to vend their wares, and have the good fortune to bring them into port, should suffer being plundered by privateers under the very cannon that should protect them! The most eminent and useful author of the age we live in, after having laid out a princely revenue in works of charity and beneficence, as became the greatness of his mind and the sanctity of his character, would have left the person in the world who was the dearest to him in a narrow condition, had not the sale of his immortal writings brought her in a very considerable dowry; though it was impossible for it to be equal to their value. Every one will know that I here mean the works of the late Archbishop of Canterbury,1 the copy of which was sold for £2500.

I do not speak with relation to any party; but it has happened, and may often so happen, that men of great

1 Tillotson.