a periodical founded in 1793, and exceedingly influential between that
time and about 1812. Archbishop Whateley, correcting a statement in the
_Life_ of Copleston by W.J. Copleston, says that it was occasioned by a
review of Mant's poems in the _British Critic_[2]. But on referring to
the review of these poems, which appeared in the November number of 1806,
plainly the review referred to, we find nothing in it to support
Whateley's assertion. That the reviews in the _British Critic_ are,
however, what Copleston is parodying in the critique of _L'Allegro_ is
abundantly clear, but what he says about voyages and travels and about
science and recondite learning appear to have reference to articles
particularly characteristic of the _Edinburgh Review_. It was not,
however, till after the date of Copleston's parody that the _Edinburgh
Review_ began conspicuously to illustrate what Copleston here satirises;
it was not till a time more recent still that periodical literature
generally exemplified in literal seriousness what Copleston intended as
extravagant irony. It is interesting to compare with Copleston's remarks
what Thackeray says on the same subjects in the twenty-fourth chapter of
_Pendennis_, entitled 'The Pall Mall Gazette.' This brochure is evidently
modelled on Swift's 'Digression Concerning Critics' in the third section
of the _Tale of a Tub_, and owes something also to the _Treatise on the
Bathos_ in Pope's and Swift's _Miscellanies_, as the title may have been
suggested by Shaftesbury's _Advice to an Author_. The _Advice_ itself and
the supplementary critique of Milton are clever and have good points, but
they will not bear comparison with the satire of Swift and Pope.

The excerpt which comes next in this Miscellany links with the name of
the author of the _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_ the name of the most
illustrious of his contemporaries. The difference, indeed, between Milton
and Dryden is a difference not in degree merely, but in kind, so
immeasurably distant and alien is the sphere in which they moved and