CHAP. L] REVIEWING FOE ME. AND MRS. GRIFFITHS.
perpetual professor. " He rather converses," said Gold- 1767.
smith, ** with the ease of a cheerful companion, than JEt. 29.
" dictates, as other writers in this class have done, with
" the affected superiority of an Author. He is the first
" writer since Bickerstajf'e who has been perfectly satyrical
" yet perfectly goodnatured; and who never, for the sake
" of declamation, represents simple folly as absolutely
" criminal. He has solidity to please the grave, and
" humour and wit to allure the gay." * Our author by
compulsion seemed here to anticipate his authorship by
choice, and with indistinct yet hopeful glance beyond his
dunciad and its deities, perhaps turned with better faith to
Burke's essay on the beautiful. His criticism t was
elaborate and excellent; he objected to many parts of the
theory, and especially to the materialism on which it
founded the connection of objects of pleasure with a
necessary relaxation of the nerves; but these objections,
discreet and well considered, gave strength and relish to its
praise, and Burke spoke to many of his friends of the
pleasure it had given him.
And now appeared, in three large quarto volumes, followed
•within six months by a fourth, the Complete History of
England, deduced/ from the Descent of Julius Ccssar to the
Treaty of Aix la Chapelle in 1748. Containing the
Transactions of One Thousand Eight Hundred and Three
Years. By T. Smollett, M.D. The wonder of this
performance had been its incredibly rapid production: the
author of Random and Pickle having in the space of fourteen
* MontHy Review, xvi. 444, May 1757.
•h Ibid, 473. I may add, that besides these and other detailed and important
articles in this May number, he contributed also twenty-three notices of minor
works to the department of the review styled the Monthly Catalogue (for which,
indeed, he wrote largely every month), and a compilation of literary news from
Italy, dated from Padua /