Privileges of a Novel Writer. A NOVEL WRITER may be as profufe of titles, as any monarch in Europe. may lay all his or her scenes in high life, provided he or she live in a garret. may break a promife as well any Lord in the kingdom. not bound to fpell words accord ing to Johnfon, Sheridan, &c, -if a female, at full liberty to break Prifcian's head, as often as fhe does her husband's; and if her novel does not fucceed, may hang or drown herself painters ? why not, as well as poets and entitled to profe licence as well as poetic, and to eat and drink at pleasure-in imagination. -at full liberty to feize on all French prizes, provided they understand a few words of the language. -at -entitied to difemvow rather, as Tom Brown expreffes it, to difembou word or words, in the English or any othe guage. -always permitted to thro one half of their faults on the unfortunate pref the other on the bad taste of the public. TH THE WANDERING ISLANDER, &c. LETTER I MY DEAR FRIEND, Now I ftand like a stranger at the meeting of many roads, not fo much as a finger-poft to direct me-take but one at once-thank you, Mafter Tony. Measure it a hundred times, faith the Italian, before you cut it once-may I be found to be related to fome rafcally, what you please to call him, doomed doomed to live in the perpetual fmiles of fortune, and even knighted into the bargain, if ever I once thought of the matter!Pies on your artificial letters!-let it flow from the pen as it is dictated by the heart, without fo much as once paffing into the head, and perhaps it will be nothing the worfe for it. Every thing has a beginning, as Abidas* faid, when he ran mad; and no doubt many of my friends will imagine that I am about to follow the infpired example, non paffibus æquis, in thus launching out my little paquet-boat, amidst the ad * A celebrated philofopher, author of a scarce tract, entitled A Treatife on Methodized Madnefs, by which any man of plain common fenfe, in lefs than three weeks, may, if he chuses, run as mad as a March Hare. The author, it is true, in many places has laid himself open to many animadverfions, or rather any mad - verfions, according to the orthography of Mr. Elphinstone. See the firft fection of the fecond page of the third. chapter of the fourth volume of the fifth book of the works of Johannes in Nubibus, faithfully printed after the laft Lunar edition.. venturous venturous rovers of the pen, after I had gained the harbour fo long languished after: as I promised, however, to give fome account of the voyage, fuch as it was, on a ftormy ocean, without compafs or rudder, perhaps, I shall not meet with a better opportunity than the prefent, as I have been just inducted into a large farm-you thought I was going to fay a benefice -which may be faid to be entirely in a state of nature, that is the very state I wished to have it in; as you know I am fond of agriculture, not a moment in a fhort time fhall I have to spare. In one corner I intend to fow all my wild oats; in another I am about to raise a bower to the bees; in a third I fhall twine an arbour for Philomela, that nightly fings beneath my window -I fhall take care that no rude hand fhall invade her downy neft; in the fourth, as I have corners enough, I have fcoped out the leaf-wrought grotto, of which you were fo kind as to |