it was with manly self-assertion of attainments which raised him above the herd, that he afterward scornfully disclaimed that viler brotherhood. 'I fire with indignation

when I see persons wholly destitute of education and 'genius indent to the press, and turned book-makers; adding to the sin of criticism the sin of ignorance; 'whose trade is a bad one, and who are bad workmen in 'the trade.' So much was not to be said of his workmanship, by even the deity of The Dunciad; the contriver of books to be made, the master employer in the miserable craft, Griffiths himself.

And thus comes upon the scene that other arch-foe, to whom, in modern days, the literary craftsman is but minister and servant. The critic or sophist might have been contriver of all harms, while the field of mischief was his own, and limited to a lecture-room of Athens or Alexandria; but he bowed to a more potent spirit of evil when the man of Paternoster Row or the Poultry came up in later days, took literature into charitable charge, and assumed exclusive direction of laws of taste and men of learning. Drawing on a hard experience, Goldsmith depicted the precarious daily fate of the bookseller's workman: 'coming down at stated inter'vals to rummage the bookseller's counter for materials 'to work upon a fate which other neglects now made inevitable. 'The author,' said Goldsmith, 'unpatron'ised by the great, has naturally recourse to the bookseller. 'There cannot perhaps be imagined a combination more

prejudicial to taste than this. It is the interest of the one 'to allow as little for writing, and of the other to write as 'much, as possible. Accordingly, tedious compilations and 'periodical magazines are the result of their joint endeavours. In these circumstances the author bids adieu to 'fame; writes for bread; and for that only, imagination is seldom called in. He sits down to address the venal muse with the most phlegmatic apathy; and, as we are ' told of the Russian, courts his mistress by falling asleep in her lap. His reputation never spreads in a wider 'circle than that of "the trade," who generally value him, 'not for the fineness of his compositions, but the quantity he works off in a given time. A long habit of writing ' for bread thus turns the ambition of every author at last into avarice. He finds that he has written many years, 'that the public are scarcely acquainted even with his

name; he despairs of applause, and turns to profit which 'invites him. He finds that money procures all those 'advantages, that respect, and that ease, which he vainly

expected from fame. And thus the man, who, under the protection of the great, might have done honour 'to humanity; when only patronised by the bookseller, becomes a thing little superior to the fellow who works

' at the press.' In connection with this unpromising picture, he placed the two Literary Reviews and Ma'gazines without number:' adding that, were these 'Monthly Reviews and Magazines frothy, pert, or absurd, they might find some pardon; but to be dull and

'dronish is an encroachment on the prerogative of a folio.' For one example of the evil, he instanced the power of a single monosyllable in these productions, to express the victory over humour among us. Does the poet 'paint the absurdities of the vulgar, then he is low: does 'he exaggerate the features of folly to render it more 'thoroughly ridiculous, he is then very low.' And he laughingly suggested that check might possibly be given to it by some such law enacted in the republic of letters 'as we find takes effect in the House of Commons. As 'no man there can show his wisdom, unless qualified by 'three hundred pounds a-year, so none here should possess ' gravity, unless his work amounted to three hundred 'pages.' In other parts of the treatise he guards himself from being supposed to wish that a mere money-service, a system of flattery and beggary, should replace that of the booksellers. He would object, he says, to indigence and effrontery subjecting learning itself to the contempts incurred by its professors; but he would no more have an author draw a quill merely to take a purse, than present a pistol for the same purpose.

These passages in the Enquiry were startling, and not to be protected from notice by even the obscurity of the writer. They struck at the seat of a monstrous evil. We must observe' said Smollett, noticing the book in the Critical Review, that, against his own conviction, this author has indiscriminately censured the 'two Reviews; confounding a work undertaken from

'public spirit, with one supported for the sordid purposes of 'a bookseller. It might not become us to say more on this 'subject.' The sordid bookseller was not so delicate, and said much more; calling in for the purpose the pen of Kenrick, a notorious and convicted libeller. 'It requires

a good deal of art and temper,' said the Monthly Review, after objections to the whole treatise, shallow as they were severe, 'to write consistently against the dictates of his 'own heart. Thus, notwithstanding our author talks 'so familiarly of us, the great, and affects to be thought 'to stand in the rank of patrons, we cannot help think'ing that in more places than one he has betrayed in 'himself the man he so severely condemns for drawing his 'quill to take a purse. We are even so firmly convinced 'of this, that we dare put the question home to his con'science, whether he never experienced the unhappy situa'tion he so feelingly describes in that of a literary understrapper? His remarking him as coming down from his 'garret to rummage the bookseller's shop for materials to 'work upon, and the knowledge he displays of his 'minutest labours, give great reason to suspect' (generous and forbearing Griffiths!) 'he may himself have had re'course to the bad trade of bookmaking. Fronti nulla 'fides. We have heard of many a writer, who, patronised only by his bookseller, has nevertheless affected the 'gentleman in print, and talked full as cavalierly as our ' author himself. We have even known one hardy enough' (Goldsmith had, as was pointed out in another part

of the notice, spoken in the Enquiry of the Marquis d'Argens as attempting to add the character of a philosopher to the vices of a debauchee) publicly to 'stigmatise men of the first rank in literature for their 'immoralities, while conscious himself of labouring under 'the infamy of having by the vilest and meanest actions 'forfeited all pretensions to honour and honesty. If such 'men as these, boasting a liberal education and pretending 'to genius, practise at the same time those arts which 'bring the sharper to the cart's-tail or the pillory, need 'our author wonder that learning partakes the contempt 'of its professors.'

The time will come when Mr. Griffiths, with accompaniment such as that of his ancient countryman's friend when the leek was offered, will publicly withdraw these vulgar falsehoods; and meanwhile they are not deserving of remark. Indeed, the quarrel, or interchange of foul reproach, as between author and bookseller, may claim at all times the least possible part of attention. It is a third more serious influence to which appeal is made, and on whose right interference the righteous arrangement will at last depend. But at the close of the second epoch, so brief yet so sorrowful, in the life of this great and genuine man-of-letters, it becomes us at least to understand the appeal he would have entered against the existing controul and government of the destinies of Literature. It was manifestly premature, and some passages of his after life will seem to avow as much but it had too sharp an