istorical composition! Gravina, with
great taste and spirit, has written on poetry and poets, but he composed
tragedies which give him no title to be ranked among them.

ANECDOTES OF CENSURED AUTHORS.

It is an ingenious observation made by a journalist of Trevoux, on
perusing a criticism not ill written, which pretended to detect several
faults in the compositions of Bruyere, that in ancient Rome the great
men who triumphed amidst the applauses of those who celebrated their
virtues, were at the same time compelled to listen to those who
reproached them with their vices. This custom is not less necessary to
the republic of letters than it was formerly to the republic of Rome.
Without this it is probable that authors would be intoxicated with
success, and would then relax in their accustomed vigour; and the
multitude who took them for models would, for want of judgment, imitate
their defects.

Sterne and Churchill were continually abusing the Reviewers, because
they honestly told the one that obscenity was not wit, and obscurity was
not sense; and the other that dissonance in poetry did not excel
harmony, and that his rhymes were frequently prose lines of ten
syllables cut into verse. They applauded their happier efforts.
Notwithstanding all this, it is certain that so little discernment
exists among common writers and common readers, that the obscenity and
flippancy of Sterne, and the bald verse and prosaic poetry of Churchill,
were precisely the portion which they selected for imitation. The
blemishes of great men are not the less blemishes, but they are,
unfortunately, the easiest parts for imitation.

Yet criticism may be too rigorous, and genius too sensible to its direst
attacks. Sir John Marsham, having published the first part of his
"Chronology," suffered so much chagrin at the endless controversies
which it raised--and some of his critics went so far as to affirm it was
designed to be detrimental to revelation--that he burned the second
part, which was ready for the press. Pope was observed to writhe with
anguish in his chair on hearing mentioned the letter of Cibber, with
other temporary attacks; and it is said of Montesquieu, that he was so
much affected by the criticisms, true and false, which he daily
experienced, that they contributed to hasten his death. Ritson's extreme
irritability closed in lunacy, while ignorant Reviewers, in the shapes
of assassins, were haunting his death-bed. In the pre