but a few verses remain. It is to the Deipnosophists » of « Athenæus, a work marked deeply with the wounds of time; it is to the tasteless collection of that haughty and turbulent prelate, Photius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, that we must have recourse, if we would collect the scattered gems of the lighter literature of the Ancients.

To the Greek,-living in a climate where mere animal existence is an uninterrupted succession of pleasurable sensations, with a Religion whose every ceremony was a sacrifice to the Beautiful, which made every Breeze vocal with a hymn to the Good Goddess-the great spirit of Nature;-which made every flower-bell the abiding-place of a Nymph, glimpses were undoubtedly revealed of what Sir Thomas Brown (1) quaintly but exquisitely calls the deuteroscopie or second-sight of things: the lively Grecian," to use the eloquent words of the great Poet of our own time,

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with unrivalled skill,

As merest observation furnished hints

For studious Fancy, with his hand bestowed
On fluent Operations a fixed shape;

Metal or Stone, idolatrously served.

And yet

triumphant o'er this pompous show Of Art, this palpable array of sense

-

On every side encountered; in despite
Of the gross Fictions chaunted in the streets
By wandering Rhapsodists, and in contempt.
Of doubt and bold denial, hourly urged
Amidst the wrangling schools a SPIRIT hung,
Beautiful Region! o'er thy Towers and Farms,
Statues and Temples, and memorial Tombs:
And emanations were perceived, and acts
Of immortality, in nature's course
Exemplified by Mysteries, that were felt
As bonds, by grave Philosopher imposed,
Or armed Warrior. (2)

(') Pseudodoxia Epidemica. Lib. 1. Cap. ii. (') Wordsworth. Excursion, Canto IV.

:

To the Greek the want of Printing was a deprivation perhaps much less severe than we are apt to imagine for him the vivid dialogue and brilliant sword-play 'of intellect, listened to and mingled with beneath the Parian columns of the Porch, or among the shady recesses » of Academe, supplied, and less imperfectly than we can perhaps now conceive, that splendour of wit and condensed weight of wisdom which is conveyed to us by the less perishable, though less picturesque, medium of periodical publication..

"

The time will arrive,» said Johnson, when men may come to write entirely aphoristically; when we shall be weary of introduction, and connection, and preparation;» (')-a consummation to which we appear to be approaching rapidly, urged on by our growing impatience of elaborate discussion, and no less by the want of time to be devoted to the field'of theory, so far and so increasingly cultivated.

At the birth of a Publication like the present, whose object it is to present, in a condensed form, the quintessence of all that is most interesting and instructive in the periodical literature of Great Britain,-to twine a carefully-culled garland, from this so blooming portion of the great garden of European Letters-it will not, we apprehend, seem out of place to sketch the gradual progress which has been made in the cultivation of these bright but evanescent flowers; and to trace the History of Periodical Publications in England.

That these works will form a necessary and not unimportant feature in the literary history of the age — nay, that they have played no insignificant part in the great Social Drama of their epoch, will, we think, be obvious to any one who considers how deeply they are themselves impressed with the physiognomy of that age, in which their existence has in turn influenced, and been influenced by, the Character and expression of Society.

The example set in France, about the middle of the Seventeenth century, by the learned and sarcastic De Sallo, and followed up with such valuable results by Bayle, De la Roque and

(') Boswell's Life of Johnson, vol. iii. p. 324.

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Basnage (1), was, as may be easily supposed, speedily imitated in Great Britain; « a Nation, to use the magnificent language of England's great Poet, «not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit; acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the «highest that human capacity can soar to. Therefore the « studies of learning in her deepest sciences have been so an«cient and so eminent among us, that writers of good antiquity and able judgement have been persuaded, that even the school of Pythagoras and the Persian wisdom took beginning « from the philosophy of this island. And that wise and civil «Roman, Julius Agricola, who governed here once for Cæsar, preferred the natural wits of Britain before the laboured "studies of the French.» (2)

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"

The first of a very numerous class of works devoted to criticism and bibliography was called Weekly Memorials, or an Account of Books lately set forth, and like most of those which soon began to succeed it in great numbers, consisted of little more than a collection of passages, selected without judgment from the works it professed to review, arranged without connection, and commented on without taste. This work, as we learn from Nicholls' Literary Anecdotes (3), was established in January, 1688, and was followed by the « Censura Temporum, appearing about twenty years afterwards, together with the Bibliotheca Curiosa,» similar in character to itself. To dwell with any minuteness of detail upon the multitude of similar works that appeared at this period, would be attended with neither profit nor amusement; suffice it to mention the Memoirs of Literature », which attained the size of eight volumes 8o in 1722; a continuation of the same work by Michael de la Roche, in six volumes, 1725; the « Present State of the Republick of Letters, edited by Andrew Reid,

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() Vide D'Israeli's « Curiosities of Literature, vol. I, and Stebbings'« Lectures on Periodical Literature >> published in the Athenæum for 1828, Nos 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28.

(*) Milton, Areopagitica.

() Vol. III, passim.

existing over a period from 1728 to 1736; "Historia Literaria, by Archibald Bower, commencing in 1730 and continuing only for two years; and the « Literary Journal, published in Dublin, whose existence was about twice as long. (1)

Of these publications it will not be necessary to say much; they consist generally of ill-selected extracts, and are devoid alike of skilful analysis, and of that far-reaching range of speculation which gives such value to the Reviews of the present day; whose articles either develope, by a close and keen anatomy, the beauties or defects of the work before them; or, taking its subject as their text, present us with dissertations which, for grasp and dignity of thought, magnificence of illustration, and condensed vigour of style, may often be placed in competition with the noblest efforts of antiquity.

I was acquainted» says Gibbon, only with two ways of criticising a beautiful passage: the one, to show, by an exact anatomy of its distinct beauties, from whence they spring; the other, an idle exclamation, a general panegyric, which leaves nothing behind. Longinus has shown me a third. He tells me his own feelings upon reading it; and tells them with such energy that he communicates them. »

In the first of these methods of criticism the journals of this period are deficient; and for the third we may look in vain, in the bald mediocrity of their style, for any passages possessed of that electric power by which a writer can extend to others the enthusiasm he feels himself.

Against the Reviews of this period another and a graver charge may be preferred: being the property of their publishers, it too frequently happened that personal partiality and commercial rivalry interfered with the just discharge of the high and solemn duties which devolve upon the literary censor; a partiality, which, if it still exist, is, in the present age, neutralized by the great variety of contending parties in political, religious, and literary doctrines, each of which pos

Vide Gough's British Ant quities, p. 745. Drake's Essays on the « Rambler »> « Adventurer» and « Tatler.» vol. 11, pp. 336.

sesses in one or more of these publications an organ for the exposition of its dogmas, and the development of its theories. Independently of this consideration, a very striking change has taken place a change in some measure attributable to the great importance this kind of publication has gradually acquired in the relative position of the Author and the Publisher. A literary man no longer wrings from the reluctant hand of the uneducated and insolent tradesman the hardearned pittance of his mental labour; he no longer is condemned to turn a Persian tale for half-a-crown; nor to fawn for a dinner upon a hard taskmaster; to satisfy the hunger of starvation with the niggard orts of a Bookseller's table. Let every author of the present day reflect with gratitude on the different position of his calling since the time when the greatest of English moral writers subscribed himself yours Impransus, S. Johnson» ('); or was forced, by the raggedness of his coat, to cat his portion behind a screen at the house of Cave the publisher. (2)

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Viewed in the light of the present system of Criticism, and upon the high footing on which periodical dissertation is now placed, the Patriarch of the Reviews may be considered to be the Monthly, established in 1749 by Ralph Griffith Esq., a person eminently possessed of the qualities necessary for his important task, and who continued to direct it for a period of more than half a century. It was afterwards carried on by his son, a fit successor to the Editorial chair; and its volumes are remarkable for the candour, acumen, and elegance of their disquisitions. The political opinions espoused by this journal were of the Whig or Opposition character, and were developed with an intelligence and moderation which we could wish were more frequently imitated by the adherents of those principles.

"

Within a year of the establishment of the last mentioned review, was begun the Journal Britannique, edited by the learned Dr Matthew Maty, originally a physician at the Hague,

(') Boswell's Life of Johnson. Vol. II, p. 87.

(3) Ibid. Vol. II. p. 14.