s into a very different sphere
of criticism, and has indeed a direct application to our own time. It was
written by Edward Copleston, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's and Bishop of
Llandaff. Born in February 1776 at Offwell, in Devonshire, Copleston
gained in his sixteenth year a scholarship at Corpus Christi College,
Oxford. After carrying off the prize for Latin verse, he was elected in
1795 Fellow of Oriel. In 1800, having been ordained priest, he became
Vicar of St. Mary's. In 1802 he was elected Professor of Poetry, in which
capacity he delivered the lectures subsequently published under the title
of _Praelectiones Academicae_--a favourite book of Cardinal Newman's. In
1814 he succeeded Dr. Eveleigh as Provost of Oriel. In 1826 he was made
Dean of Chester, in 1828 Bishop of Llandaff and Dean of St. Paul's. He
died at Llandaff, on October 14th, 1849. Copleston is one of the fathers
of modern Oxford, and from his provostship date many of the reforms which
transformed the University of Gibbon and Southey into the University of
Whateley, of Newman, of Keble, and of Pusey. The brochure which is
printed here was written when Copleston was Fellow and Tutor of Oriel. It
was immediately inspired, not, as is commonly supposed, by the critiques
in the _Edinburgh Review_, but by the critiques in the _British Critic_,
a periodical founded in 1793, and exceedingly influential between that
time and about 1812. Archbishop Whateley, correcting a statement in the
_Life_ of Copleston by W.J. Copleston, says that it was occasioned by a
review of Mant's poems in the _British Critic_[2]. But on referring to
the review of these poems, which appeared in the November number of 1806,
plainly the review referred to, we find nothing in it to support
Whateley's assertion. That the reviews in the _British Critic_ are,
however, what Copleston is parodying in the critique of _L'Allegro_ is
abundantly clear, but what he says about voyages and travels and about
science and recondite learning appear to have reference to articles
particularly characteristic of the _Edinburgh Review_. It was not,
however, till after the date of Copleston's parody that the _Edinburgh
Review_ began conspicuously to illustrate what Copleston here satirises;
it was not till a time more recent still that periodical literature
generally exemplified in literal seriousness what Copleston intended as
extravagant irony. It is interesting to compare with Copleston's remarks
what Thac