SOLD BY J. PARKER AND J. COOKE;
AND BY
F. C. AND J. RIVINGTON, ST. PAUL's
CHURCHYARD, LONDON.
1807.
[This splendid piece of irony was occasioned by
the omniscient arrogance of the first Writers of
the _Edinburgh Review_, then in its fifth year of
publication, with, as Sir WALTER SCOTT tells us, a sale
of 9,000 copies each quarter, and a paramount influence
in British society.
One usually looks to the reign of Queen ANNE, to a
DEFOE, a SWIFT, or an ARBUTHNOT, for depth and subtilty
of invention in prose; but here it is in abundance: not
so much, perhaps, in what is so wittily said, as in the
management and studied unfairness of the pettifogging
malignant sham Review; where everything is said that
ought to have been left out, and everything is left out
that ought to have been said.
The Writer, of course, would only take a noble Poem
for such maltreatment; and we must note the extreme
liberality of his mind that, being a strong Churchman,
and also at that time Tutor of Oriel College, Oxford,
he selected a poem of the then scouted MILTON for his
example.
Among the brilliant strokes of this Satire, two seem
pre-eminent:
(1) The designation of the Archangel of English Song
as--_Mr. M._
(2) Speaking thus of one whose life and thought were
Purity itself--_But we have already had occasion to
remark on the laxity of Mr M.'s amatory notions._]
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