ADVERTISEMENT

TO THE

SECOND EDITION.

WHEN two volumes of the following work were printed, and most part of the third sent to the press, I received the 26th Number of the Quarterly Review, containing a criticism on the first edition of the History of Fiction. In the present edition, I flatter myself I have greatly improved the book, partly by adding a variety of new articles-partly by a more exact analysis of some rare productions, of which I had formerly been unable to obtain a perusal, and concerning which I was therefore obliged to trust to

secondary sources. It is not impossible, however, that those who candidly admit that they engage in the charitable" employment of groping about for flaws and blemishes," (Quart. Review, p. 406.) may still discover or make some of their Dulcia Vitia. I certainly do not yet pretend to have visited" all the ancient and secluded regions of romance," by which, I suppose, is meant every "lumber-house of books" in the country, but have myself taken considerable pains, and (as some possessors of old romances will probably allow) have given considerable trouble to others on the subject. In professing, however, to exhibit an accurate analysis of the chief prose works of fiction, I certainly would not be understood to mean, that the work is so minutely exact, as to contain a muster-roll of all the knights who fought with Lancelot, or a return of all the giants who were slain by Amadis or Esplandian, on the coast of Ethiopia. Although I am by no means desirous to be considered of the number of those who "speken" with irreverence

Of men that romances rede

Of Keveloke, Horn, and of Wade,

nevertheless, I cannot help remarking an unlucky peculiarity which takes place in the republic of black letters, and which may be set down as a salutary cau▾ tion to those who presume to venture into that region. In most other districts of literature, the possession of a book is not supposed to confer, like an amulet, any supernatural skill on its owner; nor does a person, for example, who is so lucky as to have a copy of the Æneid, suppose himself qualified, from this sole circumstance, to write a critique on epic poetry, or a review of Roman literature. The case is different in the republic to which I have alluded. There, if a person chance to light on a few leaves, which were in former times

Redeemed from tapers and defrauded pies,

he immediately sets up as an adept, and is even by his brethren acknowledged as such, though all the information he has to bestow, is, of how many pages

or lines his fragment consists. It matters not how perfectly unimportant may be this fragment of

The classics of an age that heard of none ;

and those who have not learned how many lines, half lines, capital letters, and blank pages it contains, are regarded as no more "entitled to courtesy than the Hermanticor of the Heafrates."

The author of the critique in the Quarterly Review, after begging leave to shut his eyes on paganism, (by which is meant the romances written by the Bishop of Tricca and others, during the reigns of the Christian and orthodox emperors of Constantinople,) proceeds to compare himself and his coadju tors to the "Seven Sleepers of Ephesus," (Quart. Review, p. 386.) And sorry I am to observe, that (unless the critic procured only a fragment of my work) sleeping he must have been, or he could not have made the following observation: "Mr Dunlop has confined himself to the French romances relating to Arthur and Charlemagne ; but it would have been