It is uncertain whether public amusements continued after the Sum mer of 1746. The House was pulled down about 1757.

Lilliputian Theatre, Whitechapel. The premises had been altered from the Angel and Crown Tavern, and opened as a Theatre about the month of October, 1778, with the price of admission to the boxes 3s. pit 2s. Among the pieces represented were Midas, Harlequin's Revels, Love in a Village, with new scenery, &c. Yours, &c.

Mr. URBAN, Tis

E. HOOD.

July 7. I not the invective of not proper that I should re

Mr.Hawkins, because it involves some matters of fact, necessary to state in vindication of my own fidelity as a Literary Historian; and equally so, to shew what kind of an Historian Mr. Hawkins is likely to turn out.

Among my researches, in the topic of "Literary Quarrels from personal motives," I had to record one, where the late Sir John stood in a dilemma as the Editor of Johnson's Works. Hawkins owed no good-will to Steeveus for his caustic pleasantries; and he was not a magnanimous enemy. Averse to preserve Johnson's high commendation at the close of the Preface to Shakespeare, of Steevens, he pretended that he reprinted the Preface of 1765; which, having appeared before Johnson's union with Steevens, was free from the tender passage. On examination, however, it was discovered that all the collected Works were properly reprinted from the latest Editions. This fact was apt enough for the purpose of my illustrations; it is noticed as derived from "a periodical Critic," and marked as a quotation. This detection, of the mutilated Preface originating, as the Reviewer expresses it," from the spleen and the covered malice of the Editor" may be found in the Monthly Review, vol. LXXVII. p. 69.

And here I would willingly have closed this literary quarrel, had I not considered it as my duty, not indeed to reply to the invective of so weak a temper; but to discover what sort of a genius it is Mr. Hawkins displays, in that narrative of absurdities which he has so clumsily wrought into a kind of Bibliographical Romance,

His first"reason," for he counts it as one, is, that the Preface of 1765 should have been preferred, because "it was written on occasion of the publication of that Edition."

That

is, that this Preface of 1765 was really

written for the Edition of 1765! but he can take nothing, as the Lawyers say, by this motion; 'tis granted that a Preface is a Preface!

Secondly, that "this Preface of 1765 more particularly referred to that Edition" and therefore, being a Preface to the obsolete Edition of 1765, it should be republished in an Edition of 1787. This still is no "reason;" and of this the Bookseller, as we shall see, was fully aware.

rea

And now the Reader has his sons!" though with all his strainings he hardly reaches the plural number. But any one thing is, or are, "reasons" to him who from such untenable premises with the most provoking confidence infers, that " every intelligent man must see, that to have printed the Preface in its latter state, and not as originally written,would have been improper." It is then the result of this

Propriety," "that the work touched by the finishing hand is not so proper for preservation, as the first statea critical discovery! which adds one more to the celebrated "Canons of Criticism." If Sir John had really this. odd faste, why did he not prefer reprinting the original Ramblers,which, the curious diligence of Mr. Alexander Chalmers has discovered, often scarcely exhibit the same work.

So much for the clear exposition of the "intention" of Sir John! Mr. Hawkins has added another confirmation to a valuable truism, that it seems impossible to know the intention of any man!

But a greater difficulty remained to overcome, than assigning such shadowy and impalpable grounds, for

the

the preference of the obsolete Preface. For Mirabile dictu!-it is agreed that this pretended Preface was not reprinted, but the later one! that very one which contains the offending panegyric; and which, somehow or another, was nicely dropped!

And now from reasoning we come to narrative. The late Sir John, seated in the chair of justice, judicially issues an order that the Preface of 1765 should be reprinted-but the Bookeller " PROBABLY" mark " PROBABLY," for it is the tottering keystone of this arch, could not readily procure one; and "sent one of the later Editions to be printed from." It is like cruelty to pinch the Narrative so tender all over! Sir John knew nothing of this substitution of the perfect for the imperfect Edition; yet the Printer intuitively, as if Sir John, or Sir John's Son, had been at his elbow, suddenly sickens at the vile panegyric of Steevens, stops his hand in the right place, and rejects it. Why, using the latest Editions (for well he knew his purchasers would not tolerate the odd taste of Sir John) with the panegyric of Steevens lying before him, he should mutilate the Preface, who can tell? The secret history of Literature is not often contemporary. All this has proved a little fatiguing to me, and I fear more to the Reader: but what is more cold and lifeless than the analysis of a work of imagination? The Author of this Bibliographical Romance has vied with Homer in the creation of his incidents; but I cannot bestow the time to exhibit them in their due march and order; our Romancer having involved himself in complicated difficulties, and studious of the counsel of Horace, rightly call ed down a Deity to cut asunder the untwistable knot; a Deity, whose name in Heaven, as Homer sings, is "PROBABLY," and on Earth, as Burchell in the Vicar of Wakefield would have translated it, must be “FUDGE!" The admirable part of this Narrative as it should be, is the most extraordinary catastrophe that romantic literature can display among all its “speciosa miracula.” Our Romancer, at inat critical moment when the presence of the Hero was most wanted, to account for that aweful disappearance, —or to descend to plainer matters, when the Printer substituted the proper for the improper Edition, he thus

sings "Of this circumstance I am confident my Father was never informed; because living with him as I constantly did, it is scarcely likely that, if he had known it, I should not have heard of it, which I never did.” The Critics have been unsatisfied with the Catastrophes of the Iliad and the Eneid; no ending is complete that is not final to all the incidents of the action. Now this is an excellence our Author has most happily, and even elegantly, obtained. For, just at the close, our Narrative-poet thus declares that he has been celebrating an event, with all its numerous particulars, which he never heard of! And as he is a genius, of the reversing species, if he really never heard all these circumstances and yet tells them so completely, we are led to conjecture that he knows still more than he has told. However, this catastrophe is a beautiful imitation of the shining ivory gate of Sleep in Virgil; for it announces, as that does, that the regions we have past are the regions of fiction-and that the whole is a dream!

Let him answer how the Printer came to stop at the panegyric of Steevens, which was open before him?

Such is the ineptitude of an unskilful advocate who attempts to cover the truth by scanty subterfuge; who invents, without the proper genius; and concludes, as genius reversed is apt to do, by confirming what he would confute.

I

Yet, let it not be imagined that wrote from any personal motive against the late Sir John Hawkins. With me it was mere matter of His tory. Of Hawkins's literary character I am inclined to think far better than the Criticks have hitherto allowed; the confused statements of objects which had passed under his eye, his feeble taste, his imperfect views, origi nate in the contraction of his intellect, and will for ever exclude him from the order of genius; but his fervent researches, his literary habits, and that passion for Literature he inspired through his family, excite our respect, and rauk him among the estecinable men of letters. The redeeming genius of that family, the genius which, like the figure of the antients, bears wings on its shoulders and a flame on its head-must be a Female!

Yours, &c.

I. D'ISRAELL

Mr.