The rest of the Rambler was produced by one mind, whose resources were developed, but not exhausted, by the work. To give a history of its progress; to record the praises with which it was at once greeted by the philosophic reader[17]; the empty clamour which the light, the ignorant, and envious raised against it; the editions through which it has passed; the countries through which it has been circulated, and the effects which it has produced on our national style, would be among the most interesting of researches, but the detail would be incompatible with the limits of a Preface. Every little particular connected with it has been again and again canvassed with that admiration or hostility which only great works can call forth. The very title has afforded ground for censure, for licentious imitation[18], and for acrimonious abuse. "The Rambler," says the sprightly Lady Montague, "is certainly a strong misnomer[19]: he always plods in the beaten road of his predecessors, following the Spectator (with the same pace a pack-horse would do a hunter) in the style that is proper to lengthen a paper." A formal refutation of so flippant a charge would equal in ludicrous absurdity the attack itself. The passage is merely quoted in evidence of the literature of the times. For if so lively and acute a writer could so far overlook the design and plan of the Rambler, what could be expected from his less cultivated readers? The Italians have rendered it by Il Genio errante, and most unhappily by Il Vagabondo.[20] Its adoption was an instance of our Author's lofty contempt of the class who could not understand his meaning. "I sat down at night," he observed to Sir Joshua Reynolds, "upon my bed side, and resolved that I would not sleep till I had fixed its title. The Rambler seemed the best that occurred, and I took it." He was then in no trifling mode of mind. He felt himself "a solitary wanderer in the wild of life, without any direction or fixed point of view; a gloomy gazer on a world to which he bore little relation.[21]" This description of himself he gave under the oppressive remembrance of a particular privation: but he long before most deeply felt the "bitterness of being." He felt his own misery, and, thoroughly convinced that man was miserable, he boldly announced his conviction.