his latter work;
and for our own country, its poetry has been absolutely redeemed
by it. I do not think that there is an able writer in verse of the
present day who would not be proud to acknowledge his obligations to
the _Reliques_; I know that it is so with my friends; and, for myself,
I am happy in this occasion to make a public avowal of my own.

Dr. Johnson, more fortunate in his contempt of the labours of
Macpherson than those of his modest friend, was solicited not long
after to furnish Prefaces biographical and critical for the works
of some of the most eminent English Poets. The booksellers took upon
themselves to make the collection; they referred probably to the most
popular miscellanies, and, unquestionably, to their books of accounts;
and decided upon the claim of authors to be admitted into a body of
the most eminent, from the familiarity of their names with the readers
of that day, and by the profits, which, from the sale of his works,
each had brought and was bringing to the Trade. The Editor was allowed
a limited exercise of discretion, and the Authors whom he recommended
are scarcely to be mentioned without a smile. We open the volume of
Prefatory Lives, and to our astonishment the _first_ name we find is
that of Cowley!--What Is become of the morning-star of English Poetry?
Where is the bright Elizabethan constellation? Or, if names be more
acceptable than images, where is the ever to-be-honoured Chaucer?
where is Spenser? where Sidney? and, lastly, where he, whose rights
as a poet, contra-distinguished from those which he is universally
allowed to possess as a dramatist, we have vindicated,--where
Shakespeare?--These, and a multitude of others not unworthy to be
placed near them, their contemporaries and successors, we have _not_.
But in their stead, we have (could better be expected when precedence
was to be settled by an abstract of reputation at any given period
made, as in this case before us?) Roscommon, and Stepney,
and Phillips, and Walsh, and Smith, and Duke, and King, and
Spratt--Halifax, Granville, Sheffield, Congreve, Broome, and other
reputed Magnates--metrical writers utterly worthless and useless,
except for occasions like the present, when their productions are
referred to as evidence what a small quantity of brain is necessary to
procure a considerable stock of admiration, provided the aspirant will
accommodate himself to the likings and fashions of his day.

As I do not mean to bri