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The PRESENT STATE
bar of the public, and both are condemned to ridicule.
'But if you write for the stage, your case is still more worthy compassion. You are there to be judged by men, whom the custom of the times has rendered contemptible. Irritated by their own inferiority, they exert all their little tyranny upon you, revenging upon the author, the insults they receive from the public. From such men then you are to expect your sentence. Suppose your piece admitted, acted: one single ill-natured jest from the pit, is sufficient to cancel all your labours. But allowing that it succeeds. There are an hundred squibs flying all abroad to prove, that it should not have succeeded. You shall find your brightest scenes burlesqued by'the
