Still-waking sleep! that is not what it is!
Of praise and censure, says Smollett, in a letter to Dr. Moore,
"Indeed I am sick of both, and wish to God my circumstances would
allow me to consign my pen to oblivion." A wish, as fervently repeated
by many "Authors by Profession," who are not so fully entitled as was
Smollett to write when he chose, or to have lived in quiet for what he
had written. An author's life is therefore too often deprived of all
social comfort whether he be the writer for a minister, or a
bookseller--but their case requires to be stated.