published in
1739, in the _Gentleman's Magazine_. [These Considerations were
published, not in 1739, but in 1787. _Ante_, i. 140, note 5.] It is a
very ingenious defence of the right of _abridging_ an authour's work,
without being held as infringing his property. This is one of the nicest
questions in the _Law of Literature_; and I cannot help thinking, that
the indulgence of abridging is often exceedingly injurious to authours
and booksellers, and should in very few cases be permitted. At any rate,
to prevent difficult and uncertain discussion, and give an absolute
security to authours in the property of their labours, no abridgement
whatever should be permitted, till after the expiration of such a number
of years as the Legislature may be pleased to fix.

But, though it has been confidently ascribed to him, I cannot allow that
he wrote a Dedication to both Houses of Parliament of a book entitled
_The Evangelical History Harmonized_. He was no _croaker_; no declaimer
against _the times_. [See _ante_, ii. 357.] He would not have written,
'That we are fallen upon an age in which corruption is not barely
universal, is universally confessed.' Nor 'Rapine preys on the publick
without opposition, and perjury betrays it without inquiry.' Nor would
he, to excite a speedy reformation, have conjured up such phantoms of
terrour as these: 'A few years longer, and perhaps all endeavours will
be in vain. We may be swallowed by an earthquake: we may be delivered to
our enemies.' This is not Johnsonian.

There are, indeed, in this Dedication, several sentences constructed
upon the model of those of Johnson. But the imitation of the form,
without the spirit of his style, has been so general, that this of
itself is not sufficient evidence. Even our newspaper writers aspire to
it. In an account of the funeral of Edwin, the comedian, in _The Diary_
of Nov. 9, 1790, that son of drollery is thus described: 'A man who had
so often cheered the sullenness of vacancy, and suspended the approaches
of sorrow.' And in _The Dublin Evening Post_, August 16, 1791, there is
the following paragraph: 'It is a singular circumstance, that, in a city
like this, containing 200,000 people, there are three months in the year
during which no place of publick amusement is open. Long vacation is
here a vacation from pleasure, as well as business; nor is there any
mode of passing the listless evenings of declining summer, but in the
riots of a tavern, or the st