4 BRITISH CRITIC, 198 FOR JULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER, PRINTED FOR F. AND C. RIVINGTON, NO. 62, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD. 1800. PRINTED BY 1. RICKABY, PETERBOROUGH-COURT, PREFACE. W E have reached at length a folemn period in our literary labours. We have feen a century elose, the last years of which have been fuch as hardly any century has produced. At a time of gloom and apprehenfion, when Faction and Impiety had grown infolent and menacing, and those principles which our Church and Conftitution support, however numerous their private friends, had fcarcely any public advocates;-among those who revised new publications, not even one; at that moment of real, not of feigned alarm, when they who avowed themselves loyal were tauntingly accused of forming lifts of condemnation for themselves; at that period, though little inclined to assume a public fituation, we ftrongly felt, that duty bid us quit our private walk, to do our utmost for the general cause. The task which we then undertook, we can truly say we have performed, asfaras human frailty allows, without favour or partiality. Not indeed without affection and peculiar regard for those sentiments which we confider as excellent and facred; or without abhorrence and indignation against those which we believe to be fubverfive of all focial happiness and mental goodnefs;-for that would be unnatural, and was no part of our profeffion;-but without unfair partiality, fuch as should lead us to extol a work in other respects because we approved its tendency, or to deny the lite a 2 rary |