he poor find their account in stall-keeping and in
hawking them; the rich find in them their shortest way to the secrets of
church and state. There is scarce any class of people but may think
themselves interested enough to be concerned with what is published in
pamphlets, either as to their private instruction, curiosity, and
reputation, or to the public advantage and credit; with all which both
ancient and modern pamphlets are too often over familiar and free.--In
short, with pamphlets the booksellers and stationers adorn the gaiety of
shop-gazing. Hence accrues to grocers, apothecaries, and chandlers, good
furniture, and supplies to necessary retreats and natural occasions. In
pamphlets lawyers will meet with their chicanery, physicians with their
cant, divines with their Shibboleth. Pamphlets become more and more
daily amusements to the curious, idle, and inquisitive; pastime to
gallants and coquettes; chat to the talkative; catch-words to informers;
fuel to the envious; poison to the unfortunate; balsam to the wounded;
employ to the lazy; and fabulous materials to romancers and novelists."

This author sketches the origin and rise of pamphlets. He deduces them
from the short writings published by the Jewish Rabbins; various little
pieces at the time of the first propagation of Christianity; and notices
a certain pamphlet which was pretended to have been the composition of
Jesus Christ, thrown from heaven, and picked up by the archangel Michael
at the entrance of Jerusalem. It was copied by the priest Leora, and
sent about from priest to priest, till Pope Zachary ventured to
pronounce it a _forgery_. He notices several such extraordinary
publications, many of which produced as extraordinary effects.

He proceeds in noticing the first Arian and Popish pamphlets, or rather
_libels_, i. e. little books, as he distinguishes them. He relates a
curious anecdote respecting the forgeries of the monks. Archbishop Usher
detected in a manuscript of St. Patrick's life, pretended to have been
found at Louvain, as an original of a very remote date, several passages
taken, with little alteration, from his own writings.

The following notice of our immortal Pope I cannot pass over: "Another
class of pamphlets writ by Roman Catholics is that of _Poems_, written
chiefly by a Pope himself, a gentleman of that name. He passed always
amongst most of his acquaintance for what is commonly called a Whig; for
it seems the Roman politics ar