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way; and but three half-guinea ones in that number.

But, at the same time, I had, the mortification to find that my notable treatise had had very little effect. Like the honest Mr Abraham Adams, I had concluded that all good people only wanted to have a man of so much worth pointed out to them in such necessitous circumstances, and that they would all run to help him immediately; but I found myself as much mistaken as that gentleman generally was in his humane conclusions. For all the subscriptions that came in whilst I was in town seem to have been got by the mere dint of personal application: there is scarce the name of a single volunteer among them.

As I found this to be the case, on my return home, I resolved to trouble each of my best friends with a letter, to beg their good word to any very worthy and charitable persons whom they might meet with, either in their visits or at their tables, for their help toward relieving so great and so uncommon a subject for charity. Will your lordship give me leave not to omit you in the number of those friends? and can you pardon me for this tedious narrative? I know your love of doing good, and hope that will plead for my execuse. I beg leave to be ever, with the greatest regard, my lord, your lordship's most obedient and obliged humble servant, JOSEPH SPENCE.

ON THE PRESENT STATE

OF

PERIODICAL CRITICISM.

Ir is not without some apprehensions that, in prosecution of the plan laid down in our first volume, we approach the province of Periodical Criticism, impeded as our road must be with jungles, thorns, and thickets, and rendered dismal by the gibbetted reliques of unfortunate authors. The dark and mysterious forest of Massilia, in whose gloomy recesses human sacrifices were offered to invisible and malignant dæmons, impressed hardly more horror upon the veterans of Cæsar :

-barbara ritu

Sacra deûm, structæ diris altaribus aræ ; Omnis et humanis lustrata cruoribus arbor.

Our field of research, like the sacred grove of Lucan, is also subject to its fated periodical revolutions, its monthly or quarterly almutens, when the master of the sign, as astrologers said of old, sits in full power upon the Cusp or entrance of the planetary house, as Lord of the Ascendant, and the bookseller, the printer, nay,

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Yet have we not entered rashly or unadvisedly upon our dread adventure, but have availed ourselves, like the knight errants of old, of such am as might best secure us in an encoutter with the magicians of the mare of Criticism, and in some respects bring the contest nearer to equality. Ar these wizzards periodical in their e ertions? We are annual.-Are they numerous and confederated? We also are plural. Can they shroud then selves in obscurity by virtue of the helmet of the sable Orcus? We have the invisible cap of Jack the Giant killer. Nor shall we lack the pray ers of the oppressed to forward ou chivalrous undertaking. Wherever, through the wide realms of literature, there is one who has writhed unde

the scourge of this invisible tribunal; wherever there is a gentle minstrel who bewails his broken harp, a fair inaiden who weeps over her mangled novel, a politic knight who bemoans his travestied lucubrations, or a weary pilgrim who mourns his anathematized travels, we find a friend and a beadsman in the sufferer. Then with good courage, and St George to speed, we boldly press forward upon our purposed achievement.

The early state of periodical criticism is of little consequence to our present purpose. At first the art pretended to afford little more than a list of the works of the learned in the order of publication, with some brief and dry account of the contents of each, a sort of catalogue raisonnée in short, where the books published within a certain period, were arranged according to order, with such a view of each as might inform the book-buyer whether it fell within the line of his reading or collecting. These earlier journalists contented themselves with intimating what the work under consideration actually contained, without pretending to point out its errors, far less to supply its omissions by their own disquisitions. As for satire and raillery, the laborious compilers of these dry catalogues, many of whom actually expired under the task they had undertaken, had neither leisure nor spirits for such flights of imagination. These were abandoned to the editors of newspapers and journals, whence flying shafts of satirical criticism were often discharged amid the thunder of political artillery. It was not from reviews, but from Mist's Journal, the Daily Journal, the Gazetteers, &c., that those vollies of abuse against Pope were hurled forth, which, contemptible as they

now appear, had but too much ef tect upon the poet's irritability. It is hard to guess what would have been the feelings of the Wasp of Twickenham, had he lived in the present day, when ten or twelve periodical works, devoted to criticism alone, claim as their proper subject, or rather their natural prey, every new publication which issues from the press. But the grave authors of the "Works of the Learned," and other early publications approaching to the nature of reviews, could not long preserve the neutrality to which at first they confined themselves. It was scarcely to be expected, that a critic of competent judgement should, in giving an account of a new work, resist the temptation to express the information or pleasure he had received from particular passages, still less that he could refrain from manifesting his own superiority, by pointing out occasional omissions or errors of his author. And thus reviews gradually acquired the form and character which they now exhibit, and which is too well known to require definition. But within the last ten years, a very important change has taken place in the mode of conducting them, a change which, as it has inexpressibly increased their importance and influence upon literature, claims for its causes a candid and critical attention.

The discerning reader will easily perceive that we allude to the esta blishment of the Edinburgh Review; a journal which in its nature materially differs from its predecessors, and has given in many respects an entirely new turn to public taste and to critical discussion. It becomes our duty to state in what particulars the ancient system was innovated upon, and where the charm lies which has

enabled a journal of such recent establishment, not only to take the lead, and give the tone to most of its predecessors, but in a variety of instances utterly to supersede their authority, and reduce whole cartloads of criticism to a melancholy inactivity in the publisher's warehouse. For this purpose, it is necessary to take a view of the state of the popular reviews previous to 1802.

The imperfections of these journals may be traced to one great cause. Each of the leading English reviews, though originally established by men of letters, had gradually fallen under the dominion of the publishing bookseller. We have no wish to join in the common cry against this class of tradesmen, which is chiefly swelled by the deep-mouthed discontents of neglected authors. On the contrary, we feel great sympathy for their situation, and are humbly of opinion, that not only the authors, but even the age, are very ready to transfer the depres sion of neglected genius, and other consequences of their own egotism or stupidity, to the broad shoulders of the gentlemen in the Row. A bookseller, to live by his trade, must buy so as to sell with profit. If the demand for any work, be it ever so in genious, is insufficient to pay for print and paper, is it reasonable to expect that the tradesman can pay for the copy-right? The shameful fact, that the Paradise Lost was bought for ten pounds, throws infamy indeed upon the taste of the age, but not on the conduct of the purchaser, who did not sell an edition in eight years, and was probably a loser by the bargain. In short, a bookseller, even supposing him a judge of literature, has it not in his power with common prudence to make the author of a new work an offer which may be

fully adequate even to his own ideas of its value; for the risk arising from the caprice of the public must be covered by such an insurance as makes no small deduction from the price of an author's labour. But this deduction becomes much greater, and almost intolerable, if, which is far more commonly the case, the book. seller is obliged to provide some guarantee against the consequence, not only of the public fickleness, but of his own ignorance. Few of these gentlemen are, and, fortunately for the state of their warehouses, few even affect to be, judges of literary merit. They buy copy-rights as a blind man might purchase a lot of horses, at such an average price, that the success of one book may com pensate the loss upon twenty. In this point of view, the accompts be tween the worshipful Company of Stationers, and the no less worshipful Society of Authors, come, upon a general balance of the ledger, nearly to an equality, although, no doubt, the personal accompts with some individuals may stand greatly in favour of the bibliopolists. We are, there fore, fully sensible how much this trade is a lottery, and it is without the least wish of censuring those en gaged in it, that we point out the divers inconveniences attending those reviews which are under mercantile management.

A periodical publication has been often said to resemble a mail-coach. It must set out at a particular day and hour, it must travel the road whether full or empty, and whether it conveys bullion to the bank of England, or a sample of cheese to a grocer in Thames street. In such a case, the prudent owner of the vehicle purveys such horses as are fittest for this regular, fatiguing, and, in some points

of view, derogating duty. He buys 10"fine framped steeds," that are fited for a chariot or curricle, nor yet rutes that, by their clumsy make and ulk of bone, are qualified only to ug in a drayman's cart; but he laours to secure, of

Spare-fed prancers many a raw-boned pair ;"

ich as have, perhaps, seen their best ays, and acquired discretion to subit to their necessary task, while hey retain vigour and animation sufcient to tug through it speedily and ardily. The bare-worn common of terature has always afforded but too umerous a supply of authors who old a similar description; and who, y misfortune or improvidence, or erely from having been unable to orce themselves forward to public otice, are compelled to subject taents worthy of better employment, o whatever task a bookseller shall e pleased to dictate. In London articularly, where the pursuit of leters is a distinct profession, whose tudents cannot easily provide for hemselves in the more ordinary walks of life, there are, and must be, many nen of learning, of mental vigour, ven of genius, whose circumstances lo not entitle them to despise the regular and fixed emolument which may be procured by stated employment in an established review. Á. nongst these, then, the bookseller night easily select such as could at once labour at the most reasonable ate, and to the best effect; while he may be supposed also to have possessed the authority necessary to direct their industry into those channels which had obliquely the effect of advancing his own trade. It was, accordingly, a thing so well known, as to be observed even by the dullest, that from the publisher's name in the

imprint of a new book, readers were enabled to calculate, with absolute certainty, the nature of the treatment it would receive in the corresponding reviews. From this it naturally followed, that the more heavy, or, to speak technically, the more dull of sale a work happened to be, the more this tender assistance was necessary on the part of the reviewers, and the more eagerly it was called for by the proprietors of both works. A man of genius, and many have been engaged in such labour, might sometimes wince a little under the burden which was thus imposed upon him, since to produce a panegyric without merit is as difficult as to make bricks without straw. But the strongest minds are bent to circumstances,even Johnson submitted to Cave the bookseller, a sheaf of his powerful and varied effusions, with the humiliating acknowledgement, emptoris sit eligere; and it may be readily supposed, that few, who have resembled him in pover ty and in talents, have been more nice and fastidious than Johnson. It thus

happened in the general case, that the reviewer, like a fee'd barrister, sacrificed his own feelings and judgement to the interest of the bookseller his employer; and it followed, almost of course, that, without bending the whole force of his mind to so ungracious and unsatisfactory labour, he was satisfied if he discharged it in a workman-like manner, and, without aiming at excellence, was contented if he could not be justly charged withi ignorance of his subject, or negligence in the mode of treating it. In this manner, a dull and stupifying mediocrity began to be the most distinguishing feature of the English reviews,

even of such as were written by men

of acknowledged learning and admitted talents. Årticles doubtless occa

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