CRITICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL résys. 
to Oxford to. be printed,-and entrusted 
the correction of his proot sheets to a 
friend. When the work was printed and 
transmitted to London [ looked over it, 
says he, and felt myself ashamed and dis- 
gusted at the manner in which much of 
it was written. All the copies were 
srinted off, and it was consequently too 
ate to cancel the work ! 
He acknowledges with a degree of 
sang froid which is very unusual, that his 
strictures on Dr. Blair are expressed 
*¢ with a coarseness of brutality and an 
insolence of contempt that can possibly 
serve no other purpose than to defeat 
the end for which these essays were writ- 
ten.” 
Many similar expressions of contri- 
tion and repentance occur, but placed as 
they are here, serve less to soften than to 
aggravate the offence. 
ecause the copies were printed off it 
was too late to cancel the work! Can 
any thing be more gross and inexcusable 
than to publish a work deliberately, and 
with a full consciousness that it contains 
matter “ coarse” and * cruel, insolent” 
and “brutal!”? Is deliberate insolence 
and brutality to be compensated by an 
empty apology? The author of these 
essays will find that they are not; and 
although. his preface is a sort of pillory 
in which he has voluntarily exposed him-: 
self as a punishmentfor his crime,he will 
experience morescorn than compassion. 
And deservedly so; for the culprit is 
no sooner descended from the scaffold 
than he shews a strong disposition to 
tepeat.the offence. in the. preface it- 
self he says---the passage is worth trans- 
ibing as it evinces the ciearness of the 
Sear conceptions and his ability to 
cope with the eloquent rhetorician---in 
the preface itself he says that ‘* most of 
Blair’s book is made up of mere asser- 
tions, unbacked by argument, or resting 
on the tottering basis of authority, 
ich vacillates on the ground of hypo- 
etical conjecture, and only delays its 
total ruin and entire annihilation, till the 
and illustrative! The author proceeds 
) tell us that the only method by which 
at end for which they were created, 
is, by being taught ‘how to expand,, to 
strengthen, and to refine all their intel- 
Tectual faculties; but this cannot. be 
done still tho;e faculties are pointed, out, 
nean be so formed as'to fulfil the 
633 
and the means by which they ‘may bé 
cultivated explained. ‘lhis most import- 
ant of all undertakings---has been attempted 
in the Anthropaideia or Tractate on General 
Education, &c. In this ‘Tractate on 
eneral education, too, ** the means are 
faid down, by which the imagination 
may be invigorated and expanded, so as 
to exalt man in the dignity of thinking 
beings, and to render him more capable 
of fulfilling the high and mighty fttne- 
tions attached to his station in the ect 
nomy of nature.” A great many other 
important subjects, gentle reader! are 
discussed in that admirable work, whick 
great care is taken to inform you is 
“ printed for Wallis, Bookseller, Pater- 
noster Row ;’’ where also, in all probabit 
lity, may be had The Adviser, or Moral 
and Literary Tribunal, a work which. the 
author acknowledges in another transient 
visitation of conscience, that “it breathes 
nearly throughout the whole » of its 
course, more of the vindictive and mer- 
ciless spirit of Paganism, than the mild 
forbearance of Christianity, ardet instat, 
jugulat; it rages, it rushes forward to 
the onset, it murders.”” Mercy on us 
what a confession ! 
We have employed more words on 
the preface than we shall have occasion 
to do cn the body of the work.. The 
subject of the first essay is the stage, 
which I hold to be an object. of great 
importance, says the author, because it 
might be made the instrument of direct- 
ing the manners of a people to what- is 
tight, and of teaching them to acquire a 
taste for virtue. 
«Tn order to relieve the dryness and 
tedium of general rgasonings and remarks, L 
have chosen to give a particular critique on 
theta in which Hamlet was performed 
at Drury lane last winter, by which means 
‘the igeueral observations appear to slide in, 
as itswere, incidentally, and the reader is 
surprized into a truth before he is well aware 
of it, and while his interest is raised by at- 
tending to the merits of am individual per- 
former; for whatever relates to man, and 
depicts any of his characteristic fraifs and 
features, always touches us more nearly than 
any mere moral and abstract reasoning and 
reflection.” ~ 
_ After this pompous exordium, we ex- 
pected a dissertation on the moral ef= 
fects of the drama, some specific cen- 
sures to have been cast on its impurities, 
and some valuable hints to. have been 
aires for its improvement ; we ex ected 
estate, of dramatic composition. to 
ed 
