there runs a radical corruption of truth and common sense. It is most astonishing that the _Idler_ has hardly ever been attacked in this quarter by any of his innumerable invidious and inveterate enemies. I anticipate the answer of his admirers, viz. That 'the _nature_ of his work did not admit of a copious explanation for every word.' But let them first tell why he gave such a strange jumble of quotations, to support a word of which he himself knows not the meaning, and are we to be told that the _nature_ of _any_ work whatever, can entitle its author to write nonsense, or to write on a subject of which he knows nothing. Indeed the Doctor himself has repeatedly declared, that his book is deformed by a profusion of errors, and those who decline to credit my assertion, ought, PERHAPS, to credit _his own_. He says, 'I cannot hope, in the warmest moments to preserve so much caution through so long a work, as not OFTEN _to sink into negligence_, or to obtain so much knowledge of all its parts as not FREQUENTLY _to fail by ignorance_. I expect that sometimes the desire of accuracy will urge me to superfluities, and sometimes the fear of prolixity betray me to _omissions_; that in the extent of such variety, I shall be OFTEN _bewildered_, and in the mazes of such _intricacy_[132], be _frequently entangled_, &c.[133]' Here is a beautiful confession, which he afterwards recants: for 'despondency has never so far prevailed, as to depress me to _negligence_,' &c.[134] But his recantation is in effect immediately _re-recanted_, and we are informed, 'That a few _wild blunders_, and RISIBLE _absurdities_, from which no work of such multiplicity was ever free, _may_ for a time furnish folly with laughter, and harden ignorance into contempt[135].' That this distrust of his own merit did not arise from want of pride or vanity we discover within a few lines: For 'in this work' (_the_ English dictionary, as its author modestly terms it) 'when it shall be found that _much is omitted_, let it not be forgotten that _much_ likewise _is performed_. If our language is not here fully displayed, I have only failed in an attempt, which no human powers have hitherto completed.--I may surely be contented without the praise of perfection, which _if_ I could obtain, in this gloom of solitude' (_London_, or its neighbourhood) 'what would it avail me[136]?' And again, 'I have devoted this book, the labour of years, to the honour of my country[137].' _Item._ 'I cannot but have some degree of parental fondness.' But after all this parental fondness, this zeal for the honour of his country, the Doctor's extraordinary preface concludes in perhaps the most extraordinary language that ever flowed from an author's pen. 'Success and miscarriage are _empty sounds_, I therefore dismiss it' (his dictionary) 'with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or _hope_ from censure, or from praise.' All this is surely despicable. The booksellers had paid their