Proofread and pages added by Jonathan Perry, March 2001. Authors Author is a generic name which can, like the name of all other professions, signify good or bad, worthy of respect or ridicule, useful and agreeable, or trash for the wastepaperbasket. We think that the author of a good work should refrain from three things-from putting his name, save very modestly, from the epistle dedicatory, and from the preface. Others should refrain from a fourth-that is, from writing.
Prefaces are another stumbling-block.
He will never forgive you for wanting to condemn him to have a good opinion of you. It is for your book to speak for you, if it comes to be read by the crowd. Someone says you are ill, be content that you are well, without wanting to prove to the public that you are in perfect health. And above all remember that the public cares precious little whether you are well or ill. A hundred authors make compilations in order to have bread, and twenty pamphleteers make excerpts from these compilations, or apology for them, or criticism and satire of them, also with the idea of having bread, because they have no other trade.