Authors:
  • The stage I chose--a subject fair and free--
    'Tis yours--'tis mine--'tis public property.
    All common exhibitions open lie,
    For praise or censure, to the common eye.
    Hence are a thousand hackney writers fed;
    Hence monthly critics earn their daily bread.
    This is a general tax which all must pay,
    From those who scribble, down to those who play.

    Charles Churchill, George Gilfillan (1855). “The poetical works of Charles Churchill: with memoir, critical dissertation, and explanatory notes / by the Rev. George Gilfillan”, p.43