rs, or by
the laborious industry of some future compiler, transferred
into a Dictionary, and sanctioned by your great Authority.
Your success has farther corrupted our taste, by giving
birth to an infinite series of other compositions all of the
same kind, and equally, if not more, trifling than your's. A
catalogue of them would look like a Bible genealogy, and
were I to undertake the task of giving it, I should be
obliged to invoke the muse, as Homer does before he begins
the catalogue of the ships in his second Iliad. How long the
currency of such compositions may continue, how many may be
annually poured forth from the press, is more than any man
can say, without being endued with the spirit of prophesy.
But, without making any such pretensions, I can foretel,
that if ever a good taste universally prevails, your
romances, as well as all others, will be as universally
neglected, and that in any event their fate will not be much
better; for what recommends them to the notice of the
present age is, their novelty, and their gratifying an idle
and insatiable curiosity. In a few years that novelty will
wear off, and that Curiosity will be equally gratified by
other Compositions, it may be, as trifling, but who will
then have the additional charm of novelty, to recommend
them. Such, Sir, must be the fate of all works which owe
their success to a present capricious humor, and have not
real intrinsic worth to support them.

Short-lived then as they are, and must be, in their own
nature, it might be thought cruel to hasten them to the
grave, could that be effected by any thing I have in my
power to say, if they did not prevent the success, and
stifle in the birth, works which have a just title to life,
fame and immortality. Human genius is pretty much the same
in all ages and nations, but its exertion, and its
displaying itself to advantage, depend on times, accidents,
and circumstances. There are, no doubt, writers in the
present age, who, did they meet with proper encouragement,
might be capable of producing what would last to posterity,
and be read and admired by them. We have some good poets,
such as the authors of Elfrida, the Church-yard Elegy, and
the Poem on Agriculture; a performance which would have been
highly valued in an Augustan age, and is the best, perhaps
the only Georgic in our language. By the great manner in
which the author has executed the first part of his noble
plan, he has shewn himself sufficie