tic, GILBERT STUART, against the
historian HENRY.

These works may disgust by vapid panegyric, or gross invective; weary
by uniform dulness, or tantalise by superficial knowledge. Sometimes
merely written to catch the public attention, a malignity is indulged
against authors, to season the caustic leaves. A reviewer has admired
those works in private, which he has condemned in his official capacity.
But good sense, good temper, and good taste, will ever form an estimable
journalist, who will inspire confidence, and give stability to his
decisions.

To the lovers of literature these volumes, when they have outlived their
year, are not unimportant. They constitute a great portion of literary
history, and are indeed the annals of the republic.

To our own reviews, we must add the old foreign journals, which are
perhaps even more valuable to the man of letters. Of these the variety
is considerable; and many of their writers are now known. They delight
our curiosity by opening new views, and light up in observing minds many
projects of works, wanted in our own literature. GIBBON feasted on them;
and while he turned them over with constant pleasure, derived accurate
notions of works, which no student could himself have verified; of many
works a notion is sufficient.

The origin of literary journals was the happy project of DENIS DE SALLO,
a counsellor in the parliament of Paris. In 1665 appeared his _Journal
des Scavans_. He published his essay in the name of the Sieur de
Hedouville, his footman! Was this a mere stroke of humour, or designed
to insinuate that the freedom of criticism could only be allowed to his
lacquey? The work, however, met with so favourable a reception, that
SALLO had the satisfaction of seeing it, the following year, imitated
throughout Europe, and his Journal, at the same time, translated into
various languages. But as most authors lay themselves open to an acute
critic, the animadversions of SALLO were given with such asperity of
criticism, and such malignity of wit, that this new journal excited loud
murmurs, and the most heart-moving complaints. The learned had their
plagiarisms detected, and the wit had his claims disputed. Sarasin
called the gazettes of this new Aristarchus, Hebdomadary Flams!
_Billevesees hebdomadaires!_ and Menage having published a law book,
which Sallo had treated with severe raillery, he entered into a long
argument to prove, according to Justinian, that a lawyer is not a