Note 23 — Chapter XIII · THACKERAY'S RESEARCHES AMONGST THE WRITINGS OF THE EARLY ESSAYISTS—Continued.

I have ever had a great respect for the most ingenious as well as most populous society within the liberties, namely, the authors and carvers of news, generous men! who daily retail their histories and their parts by pennyworths, and lodge high, and study nightly for the instruction of such as have the Christian charity to lay out a few farthings for these their labours, which, like rain, descend from the clouds for the benefit of the lower world.

My fellow authors are all men of martial spirits, and have an ungovernable appetite for blood and mortality. As if they were the sextons of the camp, and their papers the charnel-houses, they toll thousands daily to their long home; a charitable office! but they are paid for it.