The usual design of addresses of this sort is to implore the candour1 of the public; we have always had the more pleasing province of returning thanks, and making our acknowledgments for the kind acceptance which our monthly collections have met with.

This, it seems, did not sufficiently appear from the numerous sale and repeated impressions of our books, which have at once exceeded our merit and our expectation; but have been still more plainly attested by the clamours, rage, and calumnies of our competitors, of whom we have seldom taken any notice, not only because it is cruelty to insult the depressed, and folly to engage with desperation, but because we consider all their outcries, menaces and boasts, as nothing more than advertisements in our favour, being evidently drawn up with the bitterness of baffled malice and disappointed hope; and almost discovering, in plain terms, that the unhappy authors have SEVENTY THOUSAND London Magazines mouldering in their warehouses, returned from all parts of the kingdom, unsold, unread, and disregarded.2

Our obligations for the encouragement we have so long continued to receive, are so much the greater, as no artifices have been omitted to supplant us. Our adversaries cannot be denied the praise of industry; how far they can be celebrated for an honest industry we leave to the decision of the public, and even of their brethren the booksellers, not including those whose advertisements they obliterated to paste their invectives in our book.3

The success of the Gentleman’s Magazine,4 has given rise to almost5 twenty imitations of it, which are either all dead, or very little regarded by the world. Before we had published sixteen months, we met with such a general approbation, that a knot of enterprising geniuses, and sagacious inventors, assembled from all parts of the town, agreed with an unanimity natural to understandings of the same size to seize upon our whole plan, without changing even the title. Some weak objections were indeed made by one of them against the design, as having an air of servility, dishonesty and piracy; but it was concluded that all these imputations might be avoided by giving the picture of St Paul’s instead of St John’s Gate;6 it was however thought indispensibly necessary to add, printed in St John’s Street, tho’ there was then no printing-house in that place.7

That these plagiaries should after having thus stolen their whole design from us, charge us with robbery, on any occasion, is a degree of impudence scarcely to be matched, and certainly entitles them to the first rank among false heroes. We have therefore inserted their names at length in our February magazine, p. 61, being desirous that every man should enjoy the reputation he deserves.8

Another attack has been made upon us by the author of Common Sense, an adversary equally malicious as the former, and equally despicable. What were his views, or what his provocations, we know not, nor have thought him considerable enough to enquire. To make him any further answer, would be to descend too low; but as he is one of those happy writers, who are best exposed by quoting their own words, we have given his elegant remarks in our magazine for December at the foot of p. 640, where the reader may entertain himself at his leisure with an agreeable mixture of scurrility and false grammar.9

For the future we shall rarely offend him by adopting any of his performances, being unwilling to prolong the life of such pieces as deserve no other fate than to be hissed, torn, and forgotten. However, that the curiosity of our readers may not be disappointed, we shall, whenever we find him a little excelling himself, perhaps print his dissertations upon our blue covers,1 that they may be looked over, and stripp’d off, without disgracing our collection, or swelling our volumes.

We are sorry that by inserting some of his essays, we have filled the head of this petty writer with idle chimeras of applause, laurels and immortality; this injury we did not intend, nor suspected the bad effect of our regard for him, till we saw in the postscript to one of his papers a wild2 prediction of the honours to be paid him by future ages. Should any mention be made of him or his writings by posterity, it will probably be in words like these: “In the Gentleman’s Magazine are still preserved some essays under the specious and inviting title of Common Sense. How papers of so little value came to be rescued from the common lot of dulness, we are at this distance of time unable to conceive, but imagine that personal friendship prevailed with Urban to admit them in opposition to his judgment. If this was the reason, he met afterwards with the treatment which all deserve who patronise stupidity; for the writer, instead of acknowledging his favours, complains of injustice, robbery, and mutilation; but complains in a stile so barbarous and indecent, as sufficiently confutes his own calumnies.”

In this manner must this author expect to be mentioned.——But of him, and our other adversaries, we beg the reader’s pardon for having said so much. We hope it will be remembered in our favour, that it is sometimes necessary to chastise insolence, and that there is a sort of men who cannot distinguish between forbearance and cowardice.