Act IV. Execrable.

Act V. Very Tolerable.

Dempeter later regretted his share in _Critical Strictures_ on the
ground that neither he nor his collaborators could have written a
tragedy nearly so good. _The Critical Review_, in which Mallet himself
sometimes wrote, characterized the pamphlet as "the crude efforts of envy,
petulance, and self-conceit." "There being thus three epithets," says
Boswell, "we, the three authours, had a humourous contention how each
should be appropriated."[8] _The Monthly Review_ was hardly less
severe. It conceived the author of _Critical Structures_ to be either
a personal enemy of Mallet's or else a bitter enemy of Mallet's country,
prejudiced against everything Scotch. The reviewer could not but look upon
this author "as a man of more abilities than honesty, as the want of
candour is certainly a species of dishonesty."[9]

It was natural to infer that _Critical Strictures_ was motivated by
prejudice against Scotland. It appeared in the days of Wilkes's _North
Briton_ and shortly after Charles Churchill's _Prophecy of Famine_, that
is, at the height of the violent anti-Scotch feeling which the opponents
of Bute (a Scotsman by birth) had stirred up and were exploiting in
order to force him out of office. But the critics might have remembered
that the most savage criticism of any Scot generally comes from other
Scots who think he has not remained Scotch enough; as witness, by what
new appears to be retributive justice, the general Scots dislike of
Boswell himself. At any rate, the pamphlet was the production, not of
one Englishman imbued with a hatred of all things Scots, but of three
warmly patriotic Scotsmen.

_Critical Strictures_ is the merest of trifles, but at least three
reasons can be given for publishing a facsimile of it. Scholars on
occasion need to be able to read all the productions of great authors no
matter how trifling, and this one is excessively rare; so rare, indeed,
that few of Boswell's editors have been able to get a sight of it. It
makes a pleasant and useful footnote to _Boswell's London Journal,
1762-1765_, a work now being widely read, or at least widely circulated.
And it contains a remark or two that should be of interest to historians
of English drama in the middle of the eighteenth century.

Mr. C. Beecher Hogan has given me expert assistance in writing two of the
notes.

The copy of _Critical Strictures_ used for making this reproduction