emselves, who denied a mendicant
author the sympathy of a brother.

MYLES DAVIES and his works are imperfectly known to the most curious
of our literary collectors. His name has scarcely reached a few; the
author and his works are equally extraordinary, and claim a right to
be preserved in this treatise on the "Calamities of Authors."

Our author commenced printing a work, difficult, from its miscellaneous
character, to describe; of which the volumes appeared at different
periods. The early and the most valuable volumes were the first and
second; they are a kind of bibliographical, biographical, and critical
work, on English Authors. They all bear a general title of "Athenae
Britannicae."[25]

Collectors have sometimes met with a very curious volume, entitled
"Icon Libellorum," and sometimes the same book, under another
title--"A Critical History of Pamphlets." This rare book forms the
first volume of the "Athenae Britannicae." The author was Myles Davies,
whose biography is quite unknown: he may now be his own biographer. He
was a Welsh clergyman, a vehement foe to Popery, Arianism, and
Socinianism, of the most fervent loyalty to George I. and the
Hanoverian succession; a scholar, skilled in Greek and Latin, and in
all the modern languages. Quitting his native spot with political
disgust, he changed his character in the metropolis, for he subscribes
himself "Counsellor-at-Law." In an evil hour he commenced author, not
only surrounded by his books, but with the more urgent companions of a
wife and family; and with that childlike simplicity which sometimes
marks the mind of a retired scholar, we perceive him imagining that
his immense reading would prove a source, not easily exhausted, for
their subsistence.

From the first volumes of his series much curious literary history may
be extracted, amidst the loose and wandering elements of this literary
chaos. In his dedication to the Prince he professes "to represent
writers and writings in a catoptrick view."

The preface to the second volume opens his plan; and nothing as yet
indicates those rambling humours which his subsequent labours
exhibit.

As he proceeded in forming these volumes, I suspect, either that his
mind became a little disordered, or that he discovered that mere
literature found but penurious patrons in "the Few;" for, attempting
to gain over all classes of society, he varied his investigations, and
courted attention, by writing on law, physic, divi