CHAP. L] EEVIEWING FOE ME. AND MES. GRIFFITHS.

was not written by " physicians without practice, authors 1757.
•" without learning, men without decency, or writers without Mi. 29.
" judgment," Smollett retorted in a few broad unscrupulous
lines on the whole party of the rival publication. " The
" Critical Revieiv is not written," he said, " by a parcel of
" obscure hirelings, under the restraint of a bookseller and his
" wife, who presume to revise, alter, and amend the articles
" occasionally. The principal writers in the Critical Review
" are unconnected with booksellers, unawed by old women,
" and independent of each other." * Commanded by a
bookseller, awed by an old woman, and miserably dependent,
one of these obscure hirelings desired and resolved, as far
as it was possible, to remain in his obscurity; but a copy of
the Monthly which belonged to Griffiths, and in which he
had privately marked the authorship of most of the articles,
withdraws the veil.f It is for no purpose that Goldsmith
could have disapproved, or I should scorn to assist in
calling to memory what he would himself have committed
to neglect. The best writers can spare much ; it is only the
worst who have nothing to spare.

The first subject I may mention first, though it takes us
back a little. It was the specimen-review which had procured
Goldsmith his engagement; and if the book was furnished
from the bookseller's stores, it was probably the least
common-place of all they contained. This was the year
(1757) in which, after six centuries of neglect, the great,
dark, wonderful field of northern fiction began to be
explored. Professor Mallet of Copenhagen had translated
the Edda, and directed attention to the " remains" of

* Critical Review, TO. 151; in a notice of Dr. Grainger's Zetter to Dr. Smollett
Occasioned ~by Ms Criticism upon a late Translation of TiluUm.
f The book was in Heber's library -when. Mr. Prior obtained access to it.ng for tlie prosH, and had not oven liimaclf any feith tit all in Iiin own