What then could tempt thee, in a critic age,
Such blooming hopes to forfeit on a stage?
Could it be worth thy wond’rous waste of pains?
To publish to the world thy lack of brains?
Or might not reason, e’en to thee, have shewn
Thy greatest praise had been to live UNKNOWN?
Yet let not vanity, like thine, despair:
Fortune makes Folly her peculiar care.
Charles Churchill , “The Rosciad”
