he had once written he dismissed from his thoughts; and, I believe, there is no example to be found of any correction or improvement made by him after publication.’
From his familiar handling of all questions connected with the literary profession, and his confident judgements on them, it would be easy to tell that the author of the Lives was a professional man of letters. And surely no professional man of letters ever spoke of his profession with so much modesty and good sense. The writer who condescends to the public which is to give him fame and money receives no manner of countenance from Johnson. Edmund Smith’s tragedy of Phaedra and Hippolitus failed on the stage. Addison, who had written a prologue for it, mentioned its failure as disgraceful to the nation. ‘The authority of Addison is great,’ says Johnson, ‘yet the voice of the people, when to please the people is the purpose, deserves regard. In this question, I cannot but think the people in the right.’ When Cowley’s play, The Cutter of Coleman Street, failed, Cowley, according to Dryden, received the news ‘not with so much firmness as might have been expected from so great a man.’ Johnson, though he highly commends the play, does not excuse Cowley. ‘He that misses his end will never be as much pleased as he that attains it, even when he can impute no part of his failure to himself; and when the end is to please the multitude, no man perhaps has a right, in things admitting of gradation and comparison, to throw the whole blame upon his judges, and totally to exclude diffidence and shame by a haughty consciousness of his own excellence.’ The common weakness of authors in this matter is skilfully laid bare by Johnson when he comes to speak of
