Peace be with the soul of that charitable and courteous author who, for the common benefit of his fellow authors, introduced the ingenious way of miscellaneous writing! It must be owned that, since this happy method was established, the harvest of wit has been more plentiful, and the labourers more in number than heretofore. It is well known to the able practitioners in the writing art that, as easy as it is to conceive wit, it is the hardest thing imaginable to be delivered of it upon certain terms. Nothing could be more severe or rigid than the conditions formerly prescribed to writers when criticism took place, and regularity and order were thought essential in a treatise. The notion of a genuine work, a legitimate and just piece, has certainly been the occasion of great timidity and backwardness among the adventurers in wit, and the imposition of such strict laws and rules of composition has sat heavy on the free spirits and forward geniuses of mankind. It was a yoke, it seems, which our forefathers bore, but which, for our parts, we have generously thrown off.