86 Retrospective Criticism. 



ing him of insensibility to the misery of the poor, the reviewer 

 indulges in a strain of pert flippancy, which I cannot help 

 thinking evinces, to say the least of it, a very bad taste. Take, 

 for example, the very first sentence of the critique : " You 

 have, no doubt, met with a gf^ass-green volume, of very suf- 

 Jicing 'plumpness^ and JiourisJmig appearances^ lately produced 

 under the title of The Journal of a Naturalist" The " grass- 

 green" cover of cloth or canvass must be allowed to be, in 

 point both of neatness and durability, a vast improvement on 

 the ordinary binding in boards, as it is called. Of what exact 

 dimensions the reviewer would have had the book, we are not 

 informed ; in its present state, however, it is in bulk and sta- 

 ture a very well proportioned volume. And as to its flourish- 

 ing appearance, no author's name is displayed in the titlepage 

 with a long train of F. L. R. A. G. H. S. &c. &c., in order, as it 

 w^ere, to stamp the work with an " Imprimatur," and give it 

 currency : there is no pompous, fawning dedication to some 

 noble patron, to puff it into notice, screen its imperfections, 

 and crave for it that support which it does not in reality de- 

 serve ; but orphan-like, and unprotected even by the sanction 

 of a name, the book is sent into the world to make its own 

 way, to stand or fall by its own merits ; and it would be dif- 

 ficult to conceive a more modest, unpretending performance. 

 I would strongly recommend this reviewer to peruse an excel- 

 lent little pamphlet, written in a high strain of irony, entitled, 

 Advice to a young Reviewer ; the tract was published at Ox- 

 ford in 1807, and is attributed (I believe justly) to Dr. Cople- 

 ston, the present Bishop of Llandaff. I will promise him, if 

 not some improvement in his art, at least some entertainment, 

 from the perusal, and, I think, both. 



But it is time to quit the reviewer, and turn to the se- 

 cond edition of the work itself. Instead of the bad aquatinta 

 print of the Shellard's Lane Oak, fronting the titlepage of the 

 first edition, we are presented, in the second^ with a neat little 

 wood-engraving of the tree, by that excellent xylographer, 

 Mr. Williams. This is a great improvement. The vignette, 

 however, is not in Mr. Williams's best style ; and the reason 

 is plain ; it is evidently copied, and copied too servilely, from 

 the larger print, which always struck me as the worst thing 

 in the book, wanting, as it does entirely, the characteristic 

 features of the species, and of which the most that can be said 

 is, that it is, perhaps, almost as much like an oak tree as any 

 other, and almost as much like any other as an oak. The 

 tree itself appears to be worthy of the pencil of Mr. Strutt; 

 and had he fortunately been employed to make the sketch, 

 and Mr. Williams afterwards to engrave the block from it, 

 the cut would have borne somewhat more of a family like* 



