Yet come, continued he, I see you are a lad of spirit and some learning, what do you think of commencing author, like me?
You have read in books, no doubt, of men of genius starving at the trade: At present I'll shew you forty very dull fellows about town that live by it in opulence.

All honest joggtrot men, who go on smoothly and dully, and write history and politics, and are praised; men, Sir, who, had they been bred coblers, would all their lives have only mended shoes, but never made them.
'Finding that there was no great degree of gentility affixed to the character of an usher, I resolved to accept his proposal; and having the highest respect for literature, hailed the antiqua mater of Grub-street with reverence.

I thought it my glory to pursue a track which Dryden and Otway trod before me.

I considered the goddess of this region as the parent of excellence; and however an intercourse with the world might give us good sense, the poverty she granted I supposed to be the nurse of genius! Big with these reflections, I sate down, and finding that the best things remained to be said on the wrong side, I resolved to write a book that should be wholly new.

I therefore drest up three paradoxes with some ingenuity.