And then poor Churchill!  His satire now appears to be dull and pointless.  Through his tedious page no modern student can labour.  We look back, and wonder how the rage of party ever swelled this thing into a poet.  Even the great constellation, from whose tribunal no prudent man ever appealed, has excluded him from a kingdom, where Watts and Blackmore reign.  But Johnson and Knox can by no means compare with the Reviewers.  These attacked the mountebanks in the very midst of their short-lived empire.  Those have only brought up the rear of public opinion, and damned authors already forgotten.  They fought the battles a second time, and “again they slew the slain.”

Gentlemen,

It would have been easy to add twenty articles to this list.  I might have selected instances from the later volumes of your entertaining works, in which your deviations from the dictates of imaginary taste are still more numerous.  But I could not have confronted them with the decisive verdict of time.  The rage of fashion has not yet ceased, and the ebullition of blind wonder is not over.  I shall therefore leave a plentiful crop for such as come after me, who admire you as much as I do, and will be contented to labour in the same field.

I have the honour to be,

Gentlemen,

With all veneration,

Your indefatigable reader,

And the humblest of your panegyrists.

CONTENTS.

ARTICLE I.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  By Edward Gibbon, Esq.  Vols. iv, v, vi, vii. 4to.

ARTICLE II.

The History of America.  By William Robertson, D.D. &c.  Vols. iii, and iv. 4to.

ARTICLE III.

Secret History of Theodore Albert Maximilian, Prince of Hohenzollern Sigmaringen. 12mo.

ARTICLE IV.

Louisa, or Memoirs of a Lady of Quality.  By the Author of Evelina and Cecilia.  Three vols. 12mo.

ARTICLE V.

The Peasant of Bilidelgerid, a Tale.  Two vols.  Shandean.

ARTICLE VI.

An Essay on Novel, in Three Epistles, inscribed to the Right Honourable Lady Craven.  By William Hayley, Esq. 4to.

ARTICLE VII.

Inkle and Yarico, a Poem.  By James Beattie, L.L.D. 4to.

ARTICLE VIII.

The Alchymist, a Comedy, altered from Ben Jonson, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Esq.

ARTICLE IX.

Reflexions upon the present State of the United States of America.  By Thomas Paine, M.A. &c. 8vo.