: can only be kept alive by minute incident and occasional detail, which put us in possession of the traveller's feelings, his hopes, his fears, his disappointments, and his pleasures. At the same time the thirst for knowledge and love of novelty is gratified, by continual information respecting the people and countries he visits. If you wish therefore to run down the book, you have only to play off these two parts against each other when the writer's object is to satisfy the first inclination, you are to thank him for communicating to the world such valuable facts as whether he lost his way in the night, or sprained his ancle, or had no appetite to his dinner. If he is busied about describing the mineralogy, natural history, agriculture, trade, &c. of a country, you may mention a hundred books from whence the same information may be obtained; and deprecate the practice of emptying old musty folios into new quartos, to gratify that sickly taste for a smattering about every thing, which distinguishes the present age. In works of science and recondite learning, the task you have undertaken will not be so difficult as you may imagine. Tables of contents and indexes are blessed helps in the hands of a reviewer: but, more than all, the preface is the field from which his richest harvest is to be gathered. In the preface the author usually gives a summary of what has been written on the same subject before; he acknowledges the assistance he has received from different sources, and the reasons of his dissent from former writers; and he confesses that certain parts have been less attentively considered than others, and that information has come to his hands too late to be made use of; he points out many things in the composition of his work which he thinks may provoke animadversion, and endeavours to defend or to palliate his own practice. Here then is a fund of wealth for the reviewer, lying upon the very surface; if he knows any thing of his business, he will turn all these materials against the author; carefully suppressing the source of his information, and as if drawing from the stores of his own mind, long ago laid up for this very purpose. If the author's references are correct, a great point is gained; for by consulting a few passages of the original works, it will be easy to discuss the subject with the air of having a previous knowledge of the whole. Your chief vantage-ground is, that you may fasten upon any position in the book you are reviewing, and treat it as a principal and essential, when per haps it is of little weight in the main argument; but, by allotting a large share of your criticism to it, the reader will naturally be led to give it a proportionate importance, and to consider the merit of the treatise at issue upon that single question. If any body complains that the greater and more valuable parts remain unnoticed, your answer is, that it is impossible to pay attention to all; and that your duty is rather to prevent the propagation of errour, than to lavish praises upon that which, if really excellent, will work its way in the world without your help. Indeed, if the plan of your review admits of selection, you had better not meddle with works of deep research and original speculation; such as have already attracted much notice, and cannot be treated superficially without fear of being found out. The time required for making yourself thoroughly master of the subject is so great, that you may depend upon it they will never pay for the reviewing. They are generally the fruit of long study, and of ta lents concentrated in the steady pursuit of one object; it is not likely therefore that you can throw much new light on a question of this nature, or even plausibly combat the author's positions in the course of a few hours, which is all you can well afford to devote to them. And, without accomplishing one or other of these points, your review will gain no celebrity, and of course no good will be done. Enough has been said to give you some insight into the facilities with which your new employment abounds: I will only mention one more, because of its extensive and almost universal application to all branches of literature; the topick, I mean, which by the old rhetoricians was called varian: that is, when a work excels in one quality, you may blame it for not having the opposite. For instance: if the biographical sketch of a literary character is minute and full of anecdote, you may enlarge on the advantages of philosophical reflection, and the superiour mind required to give a judicious analysis of the opinions and works of deceased authors; on the contrary, if the latter method is pursued by the biographer, you can with equal ease extol the lively colouring, and truth, and interest, of exact delineation and detail. This topick, you will perceive, enters into style as well as matter where many virtues might be named which are incompatible; and whichever the author has preferred, it will be the signal for you to launch forth on the praises of its opposite, and continu : ally to hold up that to your reader as the model of excellence in this species of writing. You will perhaps wonder why all my instructions are pointed towards the censure, and not the praise, of books; but many reasons might be given why it should be so. The chief are, that this part is both casier, and will sell better. Let us hear the words of Mr. Burke on a subject not very dissimilar. "In such cases," says he, "the writer has a certain fire and alacrity inspired into him, by a consciousness, that, let it fare how it will with the subject, his ingenuity will be sure of applause; and this alacrity becomes much greater, if he acts upon the offensive, by the impetuosity that always accompanies an attack, and the unfortunate propensity which mankind have to the finding and exaggerating faults."-Pref. Vindic. Nat. Soc. p. 6. You will perceive that I have on no occasion sanctioned the baser motives of private pique, envy, revenge, and love of detraction; at least I have not recommended harsh treatment upon any of these grounds: I have argued simply on the abstract moral principle which a reviewer should ever have present to his mind. But if any of these motives insinuate themselves as secondary springs of action, I would not condemn them: they may come in aid of the grand leading principle, and powerfully second its operation. But it is time to close these tedious precepts; and to furnish you with what speaks plainer than any precept, a specimen of the art itself, in which several of them are embodied. It is hastily done; but it exemplifies well enough what I have said of the poetical department, and exhibits most of those qualities which disappointed authors are fond of railing at, under the names of flippancy, arrogance, conceit, misrepresentation, and malevolence: reproaches which you will only regard as so many acknowledgements of success in your undertaking, and infallible tests of an established fame and rapidly increasing circulation. SPECIMEN OF REVIEWING. L'Allegro, A Poem, by John Milton. No printer's name. It has become a practice of late with a certain description of people who have no visible means of subsistence, to string together a few trite images of rural scenery, interspersed with vulgarisms in dialect, and traits of vulgar manners; to dress up these materials in a sing-song jingle, and to offer them for sale as a poem. According to the most approved recipes, something about the heathen gods and goddesses, and the school-boy topicks of Styx, and Cerberus, and Elysium, is occasionally thrown in, and the composition is complete. The stock in trade of these adventurers is in general scanty enough, and their art therefore consists in disposing it to the best advantage. But if such be the aim of the writer, it is the critick's business to detect and defeat the imposture; to warn the publick against the purchase of shop-worn goods, and tinsel wares; to protect the fair trader by exposing the tricks of needy quacks and mountebanks; and to chastise that forward and noisy importunity, with which they present themselves to the publick notice. How far Mr. Milton is amenable to this discipline, will best appear from a brief analysis of the poem before us. In the very opening he assumes a tone of authority, which might better suit some veteran bard than a raw candidate for the Delphick bays; for, before he proceeds to the regular process of invocation, he clears the way by driving from his presence, with sundry hard names and bitter reproaches on her father, mother, and all the family, a venerable personage, whose age at least, and staid matron-like appearance, might have entitled her to more civil language. Hence, loathed Melancholy ; Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born, In Stygian cave forlorn, &c. There is no giving rules, however, in these matters, without a knowledge of the case. Perhaps the old lady had been frequently warned off before, and provoked this violence by continuing still to lurk about the poet's dwelling. And, to say the truth, the reader will have but too good reason to remark, before he gets through the poem, that it is one thing to tell the spirit of Dulness to depart, and another to get rid of her in reality. Like Glendower's spirits, any one may order them away, "But will they go when you do order them?" But let us suppose for a moment, that the Parnassian decree is obeyed; and according to the letter of the order, which is as precise and wordy as if Justice Shallow himself had drawn it, that the obnoxious female is sent back to the place of her birth, "Mongst horrid shapes, shrieks, sights,” &c. at which we beg our fair readers not to be alarmed, for we can assure them they are only words of course in all poetical instruments of this nature; and mean no more than the "force and arms," and "instigation of the devil," in a common indictment. This nuisance then being abated, we are left at liberty to contemplate a character of a different complexion, "buxom, blithe, and debonair ;" one who, although evidently a great favourite of the poet's, and therefore to be received with all due courtesy, is notwithstanding introduced under the suspicion of an alias. In heaven yelep'd Euphrosyne, And by men, heart-easing Mirth. Judging indeed from the light and easy deportment of this gay nymph, one might guess there were good reasons for a change of name as she changed her residence. But of all vices there is none we abhor more than that of slanderous insinuation; we shall therefore confine our moral strictures to the nymph's mother, in whose defence the poet has little to say himself. Here too, as in the case of the name, there is some doubt: for the uncertainty of descent on the father's side having become trite to a proverb, the author, scorning that beaten track, has left us to choose between two mothers for his favourite: and without much to guide our choice; for, whichever we fix upon, it is plain she was no better than she should be. As he seems, however, himself inclined to the latter of the two, we will even suppose it so to be. Or whether (as some sager sing) The frolick wind that breathes the spring, As he met her once a Maying; There on beds of violets blue, And fresh blown roses wash'd in dew, &c. Some dull people might imagine, that the wind was more like the breath of spring than spring the breath of the wind; but we are more disposed to question the author's ethicks than his physicks, and accordingly cannot dismiss these May gambols without some observations. In the first place, Mr. M. seems to have higher notions of the antiquity of the May-pole than we have been accustomed to attach to it. Or perhaps he thought to shelter the equivocal nature of this affair under that sanction. To us however, |