‘There are two things,’ said Dr Johnson to Reynolds, ‘which I am confident I can do very well: one is an introduction to any literary work, stating what it is to contain, and how it should be executed in the most perfect manner; the other is a conclusion proving from various causes why the execution has not been equal to what the author promised to himself and the public.’ The Doctor was, on the whole, a very honest critic of his own productions. ‘I showed him,’ writes Boswell, ‘as a curiosity that I had discovered, his translation of Lobo’s Account of Abyssinia, which Sir John Pringle had lent me, it being then little known as one of his works. He said: “Take no notice of it,” or, “Don’t talk of it.” He seemed to think it beneath him, though done at six-and-twenty. I said to him: “Your style, sir, is much improved since you translated this.” He answered with a sort of triumphant smile: “Sir, I hope it is.”’ On one occasion, when some person read his _Irene_ aloud, he left the room, saying he did not think it had been so bad. Reviewing the _Rambler_ late in life, he shook his head, and said it was ‘too wordy.’ A good specimen of honest, manly self-criticism is afforded by a letter of Sydney Smith’s to Jeffrey, who had written to him complaining that he treated grave subjects in too jocular a vein. ‘You must consider,’ he writes, ‘that Edinburgh is a very grave place, and that you live with philosophers who are very intolerant of nonsense. I write for the London, not for the Scotch market, and perhaps more people read my nonsense than your sense. The complaint was loud and universal about the extreme dullness and lengthiness of the _Edinburgh Review_. Too much, I admit, would not do of my style; but the proportion in which it exists enlivens the _Review_, if you appeal to the whole public, and not to the eight or ten grave Scotchmen with whom you live.... Almost any one of the sensible men who write for the _Review_ could have done a much wiser and more profound article than I have done upon the Game Laws. I am quite certain nobody would obtain more readers for his essay on such a subject, and I am equally certain that the principles are right, and that there is no lack of sense in it.’