Since that period his reputation, or at least his popularity, has been rather on the decline. His edition of Shakespeare was with difficulty forced upon the world by every artifice of trade. His political pieces have long since insured the detestation of his countrymen, a few individuals excepted. His Tour, considered as a whole, is a ridiculous performance. His lives of English Poets abound with judicious observations; but the great misfortune is, that our historian can very seldom conceal the narrowness of his soul. Of the present trifle the Author has very little to say. The reception which it at first met with has induced him to risk a second edition. He has perused it with honest attention, from the first line to the last, that he might endeavour to supply its deficiencies, and to correct its errors. In the execution of this task, he has frequently had occasion to remark, that it is more easy to demolish a palace than to erect a cottage. EDINBURGH, } _Nov. 21, 1782_. } INTRODUCTION. When a boy peruses a book with pleasure, his admiration riseth immediately from the work to its author. His fancy fondly ranks his favourite with the wise, and the virtuous. He glows with a lover's impatience, to reach the presence of this _superior being_, to drink of science at the fountain-head, to complete his ideas at once, and riot in all the luxuries of learning. The novice unhappily presumes, that men who command the passions of others cannot be slaves to their own: That a historian must feel the worth of justice and tenderness, while he tells us, how kings and conquerors are commonly the burden and the curse of society: That an assertor of public freedom will never become the dupe of flattery, and the pimp of oppression: That the founder of a system cannot want words to explain it: _That_ the compiler of a _dictionary_ has at least a common degree of knowledge: _That_ an inventor of _new_ terms can tell what they mean: _That_ he, who refines and fixes the language of empires, is able to converse, without the pertness of a pedant, or the vulgarity of a porter: _That_ a preacher of morality will blush to persist in vindictive, deliberate, and detected falsehoods: _That_ he who totters on the brink of eternity will speak with caution and humanity of the dead: And _that_ a traveller, who pretends to veracity, dares not avow contradictions. But in learning, as in life, much of our happiness flows from deception. Ignorance, the parent of wonder, is often the parent of esteem and love. While devouring Horace we venerate the Deserter of Brutus, and the Slave of Caesar. Transported by his sublime eloquence, the reader of Cicero forgets that Cicero himself was a plagiarist and a coward: That Rome was but a den of robbers: That Cataline resembled the rest; and that this rebel was only revenging the blood of butchered nations, of Samnium, of Epirus, of Carthage, and of--HANNIBAL.