of the wisest
commonwealths, Milton seems not to have recollected, were not diseased
with the popular infection of publications, issuing at all hours, and
propagated with a celerity on which the ancients could not calculate.
The learned Dr. _James_, who has denounced the invention of the
_Indexes_, confesses, however, that it was not unuseful when it
restrained the publications of atheistic and immoral works. But it is
our lot to bear with all the consequent evils, that we may preserve the
good inviolate; since, as the profound Hume has declared, "The LIBERTY
OF BRITAIN IS GONE FOR EVER, when such attempts shall succeed."

A constitutional sovereign will consider the freedom of the press as the
sole organ of the feelings of the people. Calumniators he will leave to
the fate of calumny; a fate similar to those who, having overcharged
their arms with the fellest intentions, find that the death which they
intended for others, in bursting, only annihilates themselves.

OF ANAGRAMS AND ECHO VERSES.

The "true" modern critics on our elder writers are apt to thunder their
anathemas on innocent heads: little versed in the eras of our
literature, and the fashions of our wit, popular criticism must submit
to be guided by the literary historian.

Kippis condemns Sir Symonds D'Ewes for his admiration of two anagrams,
expressive of the feelings of the times. It required the valour of
Falstaff to attack extinct anagrams; and our pretended English Bayle
thought himself secure in pronouncing all anagrammatists to be wanting
in judgment and taste: yet, if this mechanical critic did not know
something of the state and nature of anagrams in Sir Symonds' day, he
was more deficient in that curiosity of literature which his work
required, than plain honest Sir Symonds in the taste and judgment of
which he is so contemptuously deprived. The author who thus decides on
the tastes of another age by those of his own day, and whose knowledge
of the national literature does not extend beyond his own century, is
neither historian nor critic. The truth is, that ANAGRAMS were then the
fashionable amusements of the wittiest and the most learned.

Kippis says, and others have repeated, "That Sir Symonds D'Ewes's
judgment and taste, with regard to wit, were as contemptible as can well
be imagined, will be evident from the following passage taken from his
account of Carr Earl of Somerset, and his wife: 'This discontent gave
many satirical wit