"As to those painters who have written treatises on painting, they were in general too much taken up with giving rules for the operative part of the art to enter into physiological disquisitions on the nature of the objects. With respect to myself, I thought I was sufficiently grounded in the principles of my profession to throw some new lights on the subject; and though the pen was to me a new instrument, yet, as the mechanic at his loom may possibly give as satisfactory an account of the materials and composition of the rich brocade he weaves as the smooth-tongued mercer surrounded with all his parade of showy silks, I trusted that I might make myself tolerably understood by those who would take the trouble of examining my book and prints together; for as one who makes use of signs and gestures to convey his meaning in a language of which he has little knowledge, I have occasionally had recourse to my pencil. For this I have been assailed by every profligate scribbler in town, and told that though 'words are man's province,' they are not my province; and that though I have put my name to the _Analysis of Beauty_, yet (as I acknowledge having received some assistance from two or three friends) I am only the _supposed_ author. By those of my own profession I am treated with still more severity; pestered with caricature drawings, and hung up in effigy in prints; accused of vanity, ignorance, and envy; called a mean and contemptible dauber; represented in the strangest employments, and pictured in the strangest shapes,--sometimes under the hieroglyphical semblance of a satyr, and at others under the still more ingenious one of an ass.[54] "Not satisfied with this, finding that they could not overturn my system, they endeavoured to wound the peace of my family. This was a cruelty hardly to be forgiven: to say that such malicious attacks and caricatures did not discompose me, would be untrue, for to be held up to public ridicule would discompose any man; but I must at the same time add that they did not much distress me. I knew that those who venture to oppose received opinions must in return have public abuse: so that, feeling I had no right to exemption from the common tribute, and conscious that my book had been generally well received, I consoled myself with the trite observation that every success or advantage in this world must be attended by some sort of a reverse; and that though the worst writers and worst painters have traduced me, by the best I have had more than justice done me. The partiality with which the world has received my works, and the patronage and friendship with which some of the best characters in it have honoured the author, ought to excite my warmest gratitude, and demands my best thanks. It enables me to despise this cloud of insects; for happily, though their buzzing may tease, their stings are not mortal."