There is such a thing as Literary Fashion, and prose and verse have been regulated by the same caprice that cuts our coats and cocks our hats.  Dr. Kippis, who had a taste for literary history, has observed that “‘Dodsley’s Oeconomy of Human Life’ long received the most extravagant applause, from the supposition that it was written by a celebrated nobleman; an instance of the power of Literary Fashion; the history of which, as it hath appeared in various ages and countries, and as it hath operated with respect to the different objects of science, learning, art, and taste, would form a work that might be highly instructive and entertaining.”

The favourable reception of Dodsley’s “Oeconomy of Human Life,” produced a whole family of oeconomies; it was soon followed by a second part, the gratuitous ingenuity of one of those officious imitators, whom an original author never cares to thank.  Other oeconomies trod on the heels of each other.

For some memoranda towards a history of literary fashions, the following may be arranged:—­

At the restoration of letters in Europe, commentators and compilers were at the head of the literati; translators followed, who enriched themselves with their spoils on the commentators.  When in the progress of modern literature, writers aimed to rival the great authors of antiquity, the different styles, in their servile imitations, clashed together; and parties were formed who fought desperately for the style they chose to adopt.  The public were long harassed by a fantastic race, who called themselves Ciceronian, of whom are recorded many ridiculous practices, to strain out the words of Cicero into their hollow verbosities.  They were routed by the facetious Erasmus.  Then followed the brilliant aera of epigrammatic points; and good sense, and good taste, were nothing without the spurious ornaments of false wit.  Another age was deluged by a million of sonnets; and volumes were for a long time read, without their readers being aware that their patience was exhausted.  There was an age of epics, which probably can never return again; for after two or three, the rest can be but repetitions with a few variations.

In Italy, from 1530 to 1580, a vast multitude of books were written on Love; the fashion of writing on that subject (for certainly it was not always a passion with the indefatigable writer) was an epidemical distemper.  They wrote like pedants, and pagans; those who could not write their love in verse, diffused themselves in prose.  When the Poliphilus of Colonna appeared, which is given in the form of a dream, this dream made a great many dreamers, as it happens in company (says the sarcastic Zeno) when one yawner makes many yawn.  When Bishop Hall first published his satires, he called them “Toothless Satires,” but his latter ones he distinguished as “Biting Satires;” many good-natured men, who could only write good-natured verse, crowded in his footsteps,