search for instruction in the mass of productions which are every year piled, mountain high, before him. We will even suppose whatever is most beautiful in fancy, captivating to the heart, and informing to the intellect, under his eye; but he startles at the view of the enormous quantity, nor can any degree of excellence in the quality reconcile, or, indeed, justify him, in a life so brief, and so connected with other duties as the present, to the immeasurable fatigue of such a task. Even if there should be found a few persevering spirits, endowed with a fortitude to peruse all that comes to hand, the profit would be no ways answerable to the pain by which it must be procured. For this reason, it would be proper that there should be some professional inspectors to direct our choice, even were literary excellence and defect nearly equal. But when the average is on a ratio of at least ninety in the hundred in the scale of compositions dead weight, there is not, perhaps, any office so necessary as his, who, with patient circumspection, will examine the great account be

twixt wisdom and folly, and settle the balance.

It is not, therefore, possible to conceive a more useful institution than that of a Literary Journal, when conducted with various ability and inflexible justice; nor can it be denied that a great variety of articles, in every branch of literature, have been analysed on these principles; and a due proportion of good has thence resulted to the community.

Numerous as are the critical reptiles abovementioned, there are very many writers endued with the perseverance, judgment and candour, necessary to all the useful as well as valuable purposes I have just stated.

We have to boast even at this day, of great and noble critics; and from most, indeed, in all of our Literary Journals, we find substantial

*

* It can be known only by the inhabitants of this country, and even those must have leisure for reading, and some capacity to discriminate and to decide, how much a general spirit of good writing is diffused over the British Empire, not only by compositions of length, of labour, and of high character, whether of genius or erudition, but by the most

evidence of unimpeachable judgment and un warped integrity. It is not, however, to be expected, that any human association composed of many members, should be conducted on principles uniformly sagacious and correct. Were they to write apart, and consult together ultimately, there must even then often be a clash of sentiment, a dissonance of opinion.

Yet, I am persuaded, the critics above-de. scribed, are the very persons who most reprobate the virulences, and regret the errors for which they are made responsible. The literary body

slight mediums of information, amusement and ingenuity. Amidst the mass of things with which the Press continually teems, "Born-indeed designed-like numberless other created atoms, "but just to look about them and to die:" there are now to be seen monthly and daily instances to confirm this assertion; and a judicious separator of the heterogeneous farrago that mixes with and makes up an English Magazine or Newspaper of the present day, might give to the public an annual selection of real worth, acceptable not only to readers of one class or profession, but of all. While our correspondence is at Press, I have read two examples-the one on a subject of criticism, the other of our national benevolence. "A series of observations on the Poem of the Pursuits of Literature, publishing in a print called the "Morning Herald,” and an eulogy on our Public Charities in a Sunday Paper called the "Observer."

cannot be supposed to separate, or seem to move a limb independently; much less to commit themselves, and confederate against each other, by deploring the want of candour in some of their colleagues, and of capacity in others. Thus from their not being associated by congeniality, or chosen by consent - and yet under a kind of compact to hold together, and by the good faith that should be preserved in all treaties, bound to support one another in the way of a common cause-the errors, incongruities, adulations and virulences, which are observed occasionally to disfigure their journals, attach indiscriminately to all.

A man must write from the spirit of envy, or from pique, or ignorance, if he assents not to these arguments because there is monthly confirmation of them. And of the authors who have, individually, to complain of uncandid treatment, or partial representation, there cannot be one who has genius and candour, in his own mind and heart, but must see and feel there is often just criticism, in the very publication where his own performance may be slighted or aspersed.

If, therefore, like every other valuable insti tution, abuse has crept into this; if prejudice and prepossession too often vault into the chair, and instead of its becoming a Judgment-seat, where the labours of the human mind are to have a fair trial, it is frequently a secret Tribunal, where the judges are wholly unknown, and the facts judged, so unfairly selected and argued, although formed into the most serious charges, that the work which ought to be condemned is acquitted, and the production that deserves to receive distinguished honours, is, by this ungenerous artifice, supposed to be guilty of all the imperfections imputed to it.

If, what by a misnomer is called criticism, the mutilated parts of a book are sometimes given as specimens of its general characterIf, in offering an author's argument without reference to the context-by which alone its force or feebleness is to be determined the most important and admirable reasoning is torn from its antecedent and consequent, like a limb hacked from the body, and presented in a mangled state, to serve as a measure for the