After a course however of unremitted industry, Mr. Hayley seemed
to have relaxed, and to the eternal mortification of the literary world,
last winter could not boast a single production of the prince of song.
The muses have now paid us another visit. We are very sensible of our
incapacity to speak, or even think of this writer with prosaic phlegm;
we cannot however avoid pronouncing, that, in our humble opinion, Mr.
Hayley has now outdone all his former outdoings, and greatly repaid us
for the absence we so dearly mourned.
We are sensible that it is unbecoming the character of a critic to lay
himself out in general and vague declamation. It is also within the laws
of possibility, that an incurious or unpoetical humour in some of our
readers, and (ah me, the luckless day!) penury in others, may have
occasioned their turning over the drowsy pages of the review, before
they have perused the original work. Some account of the plan, and a
specimen of the execution may therefore be expected.
The first may be dispatched in two words. The design is almost exactly
analogous to that of the Essay on History, which has been so much
celebrated. The author triumphs in the novelty of his subject, and pays
a very elegant compliment to modern times, as having been in a manner
the sole inventors of this admirable species of composition, of which he
has undertaken to deliver the precepts.
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