With

amine and analyse this unparallelled fcandalous volume, which, to quote its own words, "is only intended to pick the pockets of the public refpect to its duration, there can be no doubt. On this head a philofophical axiom fo forcibly ftrikes me, that I cannot omit bringing it in by way of comparison. The motion of a body or thing is proportionate to the force with which it is propelled, and the density of the medium through which it has to pafs. Now, Sir, the impetus which has given circulation to the Annual Review is the fortune acquired by its propriet rs in commerce with men of talents; and the refiftance which it has to overcom is that of loyalty, patriotifm-in fhort, of common fense. I am, Sir, a conftant leader and admirer of your excellent Publication,

Royal Cockpit, St. James's Park, June 4, 1804.

FRANCIS BLAGDON.

P.S. I have juft recollected that in the outfet I had promifed to touch on the origin and progress of the Annu 1 Review; but having Iready, as I fear, taken up more space than you may think my fubject deferves, I all merely ftate that I am in poffeffion of materials for hiftory of that work, and a pretty hiftory they indeed would make. The pen of the Abbé Barreul might do it juftice. However, Sir, if you have read the book, I will afk you two fimple questions. Do you perceive, nothing like a ftriking fimiliarity between the writings in the Annual and thofe in the Ea burgh Review? And do you think it impoffible that a junction of pariis may have taken place in order to give additional spirit to their exertions, and make a proper ftand against their numerous opponents?

SIR,

THE ANNUAL REVIEW.

TO THE EDITOR.

IN your article of Reviewers Reviewed, "you have done the state much fervice;" and by unmasking their defigns, and putting us upon our guard against their pernicious attempts, fo artfully and fo generally diffeminated, you have prevented, or at least diminished in a great degree, the ill confequences which would otherwise have enfued.

Another publication has appeared, whofe tendency, political and religious, appears at least problematical; and the public rely upon your paying due attention to the articles inferted, that the good refulting from your ftrictures upon other reviews may not be fruftrated, by your overlooking the Annual Review, of which two volumes have been published, one for 1802 and the second for 1803. There is a petulance and an illiberality in their cenfures, even when cenfures are m rited, that are not candid, and furely not neceffary; and fome infinuations occur, which ought to be severely reprehended. Vide page 77, the conclufion of Hunter's Travels in Hungary any fimilar are to be found, and unless inftantly attended to, will diffeminate, fecretly and unfufpected, opinions which cannot be too earneftly checked. I remain, Your's,

June 5, 1804.

A CONSTANT READER.

N. B. Our Correfpondent is informed, that a review of the first of these volumes has been finished fome time, and only omitted hitherto from the preffure of more important and more temporary matter. It is, however, intended for infertion in our next Number.-EDITOR.

SIR,

MISCELLANEOUS.

PRESENT STATE OF THE PRESS.

TO THE EDITOR.

'HE public look to you for vigilance and for important information on

infufficiency of the prefent adminiltration, and it is furely high time for you to recommend a more efficient change, with all your wonted patriotic force and energy. Some things too ought to be made public, as a prelude to due enquiry. The famous Stone Expedition, you must have heard, originated in the fertile Jacobin brains of the notorious Mr. Richard Phillips! A pretty adviler of our prime minifter and the admiralty moft truly!! But the ladder of advancement of this outcalt of jacobinifm is ftill more curious, if that may be, and hews at once the meannefs and fycophancy of that profligate fet, who would ruin ariftocracy or populace indifferently as their intereft directed. The following particulars came to me from the best authority: That wretched publication, The Public Characters, was P-s engine, and he fixed on a man of fome intereft, and not unlike himfelf at bottom in principle, on whom he might work by fullome adulation. This man was Arthur Young; and behold philo opher Godwin, (of late the hackney-tool of P-) was employed to write Ys life. (See the vol. for 1801-2;) but unacquainted with agriculture, &c. he was affifted by a certain renegado, or jacobin parfon, whole life and habits I purpose fhortly to prefent, not only to you, but to his diocelan. Young catched greedily at the bait, and as a proof of it, very foon took all his publications out of the hands of his old friend and publisher Richardion, to put them into the hands of Phillips, who has laughed heartily at the succefs of his manœuvre. Phillips, as has been faid, probably, through the interest of A. Young with Lord H-y, at length crept up to the notice of the minifter, who it is confidently faid, has purchased the late fupport of the Monthly Magazine at a very extravagant rate, and P. is looked on as a man whofe fortune at Court is certain. Nay, being a bufy and impofing character, with weak people, it is fuppofed not improbable, if the ministry hold their ground, that he may start up in fome place of truft. Apropos, one of this man's wife fchemes fome years ago, was to have district conductors as high as St. Paul's crofs, in fuch number as to disperse the thunder and lightning over a whole diftrict!!!

No minifter ever bought up the Press to the extent Addington has done; the natural resource of a weak mind. To fay nothing of the continent and Ireland, the purchase of jacobin prints here, has coft an enormous fum. The purchale of the Morning Poft, and silencing the Courier, cost a little fortune; but who would have thought of the New Annual Register and the Critical Review! they have had handsome douceurs and liberal promifes; in fact, any jacobin application has been invariably fuccelsful. Chapter Coffee House, April 21. CLERICUS LOND.

LITERARY INTELLIGENCE.

WE understand Dr. Billet has lately turned his attention to the abfurdities, follies, and mischiefs of methodim, with the view of making them the fubject of a novel.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

WE are again compelled, by the preflure of temporary matter, to omit a variety of Miscellaneous Communications.

THE

ANTI-JACOBIN

Review and Magazine;

&c. &c. &c.

For JULY, 1804.

Ita finitima funt falfa veris, ut in præcipitem locum non debeat se sapiens committere.

ORIGINAL CRITICISM.

Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, the early English Poet: including Memoirs of his near Friend and Kinsman, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster: with Sketches of the Manners, Opinions, Arts, and Literature of England in the Fourteenth Century. By William Godwin. 4to. PP. about 1200. 31. 13s. 6d. Phillips. 1803.

WE

2 vol.

E have always confidered Mr. Godwin as a man poffeffed of endowments, both natural and acquired, by the proper direction and application of which, he might have raised himself to an eminent rank in the republic of letters, and become diftinguished as a ufeful, as well as an agreeable, writer. His original talents are of no mean account; for, in all his publications, he difplays the characters of a thinking, vigorous, and comprehenfive mind. He is likewife capable of close attention, of accurate difcrimination, and of patient refearch. His attainments in learning and general knowledge are evidently refpectable; and what he knows he is well qualified to communicate in a manly, impreffive, and energetic ftile. With this opinion of Mr. G.'s abilities, we have often lamented that, by fome perverfe obliquity of choice, he should have confecrated his hours of study to pursuits which, inftead of conciliating general favour, have rendered him an object of marked diflike to all the fober and wellprincipled part of the kingdom. His "Enquiry concerning Political Juftice," confpicuous as it certainly was for acuteness of remark and depth of investigation, yet difcovered fo depraved an attachment to paradox, fo romantic a turn for extravagant reverie, and a fpirit of fuch determined hoftility to all the most falutary exifting inftitutions

NO. LXXIII. VOL. XVIII.

е

of

of civil fociety, that the author was very generally, and not without reafon, regarded not only as a wild and vifionary, but as a highly dangerous and mischievous writer. Some other of his productions, profeffedly defigned to hold up to our view, as models of uncommonly dignified worth, and of laudable imitation, characters and actions which infulted, at once, the most firmly established maxims of morals, and the fentiments of every civilized ftate, as well as the religion and laws of his country, we willingly pafs over without particular obfervation. The British public has fairly appreciated their merits; and we wish not to wage a war of aggreffion, with the memory of the dead. But we were highly gratified when we understood that this able writer had, at length, refolved to employ his learned leisure on a fubject, from which he might acquire reputation to himself, while,at the fame time, he might convey to others both useful inftruction and elegant amufement. And our gratification was fenfibly increased, when we found, on perufing the work before us, fo little to blame, and fo much to commend. The book does credit to the author's capacity, and, (which we deem a confideration of much greater confequence) in general, to the rectitude of his principles. We do not mean to fay that all the pofitions and reflections contained in it are unexceptionable; for, in the progress of our remarks, we shall meet with feveral of an oppofite defcription. But we are happy to obferve that Mr. G.'s notions, on the whole, appear to be greatly altered, and altered for the better. He will not, we are perfuaded, regard it, from us, as a flight expreffion of esteem and good will, if we take the liberty to congratulate him on the change.

If it should be deemed an imputation on Mr. G.'s good fenfe that he fuffered himfelf, like many others, to be feduced by thofe plaufible and fpecious, but delufive and unfubftantial, theories, of which the French revolution may juffly be regarded as partly the cause and partly the effect, it is furely honourable to profit by experience, and to relinquish fpeculations which, when reduced to practice, have within the short space of fifteen years, inflicted fuch mifery on the human race as baffles calculation. At the prefent moment, when all the enlightened precepts and generous efforts of our wife philofophers and benevolent philanthropifts, which were not only to abolish the reign of fuperftition, prejudice, and defpotifm, but to fix, for ever, the empire of reafon, liberty, and happiness, have terminated in the elevation of a bloody Corfican adventurer, in comparifon with whom Nero and Caligula were faints, to the title of "His Moft Chriftian Majefty, the Emperor of the French," with powers really undefined, and even circumfcribed by no cuftomary forms, it is time for mankind to awaken from thote delirious dreams of innovation, which, to cool by flanders, betrayed, from the firft, unequivocal fymptoms of moral derangement. It is mortifying, certainly, to the pride of human fagacity and forefight, to compare the effects of this dreadful revolution with the fafcinating prophecies of univerfal felicity, which ufhered in its first appearance in the world. How often have we, fince, with melancholy

dejection,

dejection, recollected the following rhapfody of Dr. Price, which was uttered on the 4th of November 1789, and which was hailed, by a numerous party among us, as uttered by the voice of infpiration itfelf!

"What an eventful period is this!" faid the hoary healed preacher. “I am thankful that I have lived to see it; and I could almot fay, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. I have lived to fee a diffution of knowledge, which has undermined fuperftition and error. I have lived to fee the rights of men better underfood than ever; and nations panting for liberty, which feemed to have loft_the idea of it. I have lived to fee thirty millions of people, indignant and refolute, spurning at flavery, and demanding liberty with an irreliftible voice; their king led in triumph, and an arbitrary monarch furrendering him elf to his fubjects. After tharing in the benefit of one revolution, I have been fpared to be a witnefs to two other revolutions, both glorious. And now, methinks, I fee the ardour for liberty catching and fpreading; a general amendment beginning in human affairs; the dominion of kings changed for the dominion of laws; and the dominion of priests giving way to the dominion of reafon and confcience."

"Be encouraged, all ye friends of freedom, and writers in its defence! The times are aufpicious. Your labours have not been in vain. Behold kingdoms, admonished by you, ftarting from fleep, and claiming juftice from their oppreffors! Behold the light you have ftruck out, after fetting America free, reflected to France, and there kindled into a blaze that lays defpotifm in alhes, and warms and illuminates Europe!"

We cannot help wifhing that the life of the preacher had been farther prolonged, that he might have witneffed the full completion of his prophecy in the bleffed effects which his darling revolution has produced on Europe. In the genial warmth and chearful illumination which fhe has derived from it, he would, doubtlefs, have rejoiced. A fenfible writer, indeed, who, at the time, published strictures on Dr. Price's Difcourfe, affirmed that "thirty millions of infurgents, on whatever occafion, and a king led in triumph, could be an object of delight only to a barbarian. The affirmation roufed the patriotic zeal of the Monthly Reviewers, who gave a full expofition of the principles of their party, by fimply afking whether the author, when he made this affertion, "wrote like a TRUE WHIG?" for fuch was the fignature, which he had adopted. But with regard to Dr. Price, fetting every moral confideration afide, what opinion muft every man now entertain of the penetration of that diffenting dabbler in politics when placed in oppofition to that of Edmund Burke! whofe warnings against the frenzy of innovation we were taught to defpife, as the interefted ravings of a man who had fold himself to be the flave of defpotifm, for a paltry penfion of 1500l. a year. Yet hardly one of this great man's predictions has failed of its accomplishment; and never furely, in any inftance, was more clearly feen the difference between the practical wifdom of an enlightened ftatefman, and the chimerical fancies of a difaffected fpeculatift, though otherwife a man of a cultivated mind.

But