WHEN fuch men as Virgil, Galileo, Bacon, and Fauftus, to whofe memory so much justice has been done by pofterity, could not efcape the fhafts of ignorance and envy, it would have been folly in the extreme for fo humble an individual as I am, to hope that I fhould escape unnoticed by the ignorant and envious. The progrefs that I have made in improving a new difcovery in the art of printing, and which is now practised at my Logographic-prefs, has been ridiculed and decried by thofe, who understood not what they condemned, or who fickened at its fuperior merits and fuccefs. No one has ventured to ftand forward

and

and attack the plan openly, though by a pamphlet which was published on the occafion, manly and candid criticifm was courted: what flanderers of the improvement, did not dare to do publicly, and by fair argument, they have endeavoured to effect by private whispers, false infinuations, and fignificant nods and fhrugs, which were calculated to convey an idea of the profound fagacity of those who made them. I could eafily bear this fpecies of attack from certain Printers to whom I have been able to trace it; it is natural to men of grovelling minds, that they should envy a person who was likely to obtain a fhare of public

public favour; but I feel myself hurt indeed at finding, that among those who strive to injure me in my arduous undertaking, there are some whom I once reckoned my friends: but I now plainly fee they were mere funshine friends, who courted my acquaintance in the day of my prosperity, but fled from me as from a peftilence, when the clouds of adverfity were gathered over me; the lofs of fuch friends ought rather to be matter of fatisfaction, than concern: indeed to have loft the friendship of worthy men, whose attachment to me was founded in difinterestedness, would be a fhock too violent to be borne:

but it is my pride to say that my

real

real friends did not defert me; they stood by me in the day of trial, because my conduct was marked with integrity, and fanctioned by honour. My misfortunes were not imputed to me as faults, they were the natural confequences of the calamities that befel the empire at large, during the course of an exhaufting and unfortunate war, the effects of which were felt even by the greatest commercial houses in the nation: it was not surprising that a ftorm which fhook the kingdom to its center, fhould overset my little bark: that my reputation however did not perish with my fortune, I have the happiness to experience by the very liberal fup

port

port and encouragement I have already received from a moft refpectable body of friends, in the great undertaking in which I have embarked. The countenance of men of worth and character, greatly overbalances any anxiety that the attacks of the envious could poffibly occafion in my mind: indeed I fhould not expect that envy would remain quiet when fuch a plan was about to be brought forward into the world; for as envy is the conftant attendant upon merit, fo it would have been fair to conclude, that what did not excite the former did not poffefs the latter. The envious therefore may Fail on; their attacks will prove

impo