I was charmed with this prospect, and having heard what friends Mr.Pope acquired by his pastorals, set about a work of that kind, and in less than six weeks composed as many eclogues, which I forthwith offered to an eminent bookseller, who desired me to leave them for his perusal, and he would give an answer in two days.

At the end of that time, I went to him, when he returned the poems, telling me, they would not answer his purpose, and sweetened his refusal by saying there were some good clever lines in them.

Not a little dejected at this rebuff, which, I learned from Mr.O'Varnish, was owing to the opinion of another author whom this bookseller always consulted on these occasions, I applied to another person of the same profession, who told me the town was cloyed with pastorals, and advised me, if I intended to profit by my talents, to write something satirical or luscious, such as the Button Hole, Shockey and Towner, The Leaky Vessel, etc, and yet this was a man in years, who wore a reverend periwig, looked like a senator, and went regularly to church.

Be that as it will, I scorned to prostitute my pen in the manner proposed, and carried my papers to a third, who assured me that poetry was entirely out of his way; and asked me if I had got never a piece of secret history, thrown into a series of letters, or a volume of adventures, such as those of Robinson Crusoe, and Colonel Jack, or a collection of Conundrums, wherewith to entertain the plantations.

Being quite unfurnished for this dealer, I had recourse to another with as little success; and I verily believe, was rejected by the whole trade.
"I was afterwards persuaded to offer myself as a translator, and accordingly repaired to a person who was said to entertain numbers of that class in his pay; he assured me, he had already a great deal of that work on his hands, which he did not know what to do with; observed that translations were a mere drug, that branch of literature being overstocked with an inundation of authors from North Britain; and asked what I would expect per sheet for rendering the Latin classics into English.