Even now all the walks of literature are infested with mendicants for fame, who attempt to excite our interest by exhibiting all the distortions of their intellects, and stripping the covering from all the putrid sores of their feelings.

Nor are there wanting many who push their imitation of the beggars whom they resemble a step further, and who find it easier to extort a pittance from the spectator, by simulating deformity and debility from which they are exempt, than by such honest labour as their health and strength enable them to perform.
In the meantime the credulous public pities and pampers a nuisance which requires only the treadmill and the whip.

This art, often successful when employed by dunces, gives irresistible fascination to works which possess intrinsic merit.

We are always desirous to know something of the character and situation of those whose writings we have perused with pleasure.

The passages in which Milton has alluded to his own circumstances are perhaps read more frequently, and with more interest, than any other lines in his poems.