Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

THE

BRITISH CRITIC,

A NEW REVIEW,

FOR

JULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER,
NOVEMBER, AND DECEMBER.

MDCC XCIV.

Unum labendi confervans ufque tenorem.

LUCRET.

VOLUME IV.

London:

PRINTED FOR F. AND C. RIVINGTON,

No. 62, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD.

1794.

[ocr errors]

PREFA CE.

N forming a Garden, for utility or pleasure, men felect their plants with care; the nutritive, the falutary, the elegant, are fought and ftudioufly arranged, while the useless, the offenfive, and the noxious are banished without fcruple, and permitted to depend on chance for a defpifed and precarious exiftence. Into a Garden formed with this attention, we endeavour to conduct our readers, when we prefent them with our periodical preface. We would place no plants beneath their eye, but fuch as may contribute to their health, or at least to their elegant and innocent gratification. The fevere impartiality of civil hiftory may require, that good and evil, virtue and vice, fuccefs and mifcarriage, fhould be equally recorded; the general connection of facts demands that all fhould be related; and it is frequently of no lefs ufe to display the evil that ought to be abhorred, than the good that ought to be imitated. But literary hiftory effentially demands felection. To tell the reader what deferves his notice is the highest service we can render. Of bad books, whether they are dull, or whether they are pernicious, the proper end is oblivion, towards which we ought by no means to retard their progrefs. An Index expurgatorius has anfwered frequently no better end than to excite and aid a vicious curiofity. By this fame rule it would be pleafing to us to conduct the whole of our labours, but fuch is not the custom, or

[blocks in formation]
« AnteriorContinuar »