offered for the discovery of the author, or that the infamous book
was ever condemned to be burnt in public. Whether this proceeds
from the excessive esteem and love that men in power, during the
late reign, had for wit, or their defect of zeal and concern for the
Christian religion will be determined best by those who are best
acquainted with their character."

In another place he speaks with becoming abhorrence of a GODLESS
AUTHOR who has burlesqued a Psalm. This author was supposed to be
Pope, who published a reward for any one that would produce the
coiner of the accusation, but never denied it, and was afterwards
the perpetual and incessant enemy of Blackmore.

One of his essays is upon the spleen, which is treated by him so
much to his own satisfaction, that he has published the same
thoughts in the same words; first, in the "Lay Monastery," then in
the "Essay," and then in the "Preface to a Medical Treatise on the
Spleen." One passage, which I have found already twice, I will here
exhibit, because I think it better imagined and better expressed
than could be expected from the common tenor of his prose:-

"--As the several combinations of splenetic madness and folly
produce an infinite variety of irregular under-standing, so the
amicable accommodation and alliance between several virtues and
vices produce an equal diversity in the dispositions and manners of
mankind; whence it comes to pass, that as many monstrous and absurd
productions are found in the moral as in the intellectual world.
How surprising is it to observe among the least culpable men, some
whose minds are attracted by heaven and earth with a seeming equal
force; some who are proud of humility; others who are censorious and