Books were invented to take off the odium of immediate superiority and
soften the rigour of duties prescribed by the teachers and censors of
human kind--setting at least those who are acknowledged wiser than
ourselves at a distance. When we recollect, however, that for this very
reason they are seldom consulted and little obeyed, how much cause shall
his contemporaries have to rejoice that their living Johnson forced them
to feel the reproofs due to vice and folly--while Seneca and Tillotson
were no longer able to make impression except on our shelves.--T. PERCY.