The first may be dispatched in two words. The design is almost exactly analogous to that of the Essay on History, which has been so much celebrated. The author triumphs in the novelty of his subject, and pays a very elegant compliment to modern times, as having been in a manner the sole inventors of this admirable species of composition, of which he has undertaken to deliver the precepts. He deduces the pedigree of novel through several generations from Homer and Calliope. He then undertakes to characterise the most considerable writers in this line. He discusses with much learning, and all the logical subtlety so proper to the didactic muse, the pretensions of the Cyropedia of Xenophon; but at length rejects it as containing nothing but what was literally true, and therefore belonging to the class of history. He is very eloquent upon the Shepherd of Hermas, Theagenes and Chariclea, and the Ethiopics of Heliodorus. Turpin, Scudery, Cotterel, Sidney, the countess D'Anois, and "all such writers as were never read," next pass in review. Boccace and Cervantes occupy a very principal place. The modern French writers of fictitious history from Fenelon to Voltaire, close the first epistle. The second is devoted to English authors. The third to the laws of novel writing. We shall present our readers, as a specimen, with the character of that accomplished writer, John Bunyan, whom the poet has generously rescued from that contempt which fashionable manners, and fashionable licentiousness had cast upon him. "See in the front of Britain's honour'd band, The author of the Pilgrim's Progress stand. Though, sunk in shades of intellectual night, He boasted but the simplest arts, to read and write; Though false religion hold him in her chains, His judgment weakens and his heart restrains: Yet fancy's richest beams illum'd his mind, And honest virtue his mistakes refin'd. The poor and the illiterate he address'd; The poor and the illiterate call him blest. Blest he the man that taught the poor to pray, That shed on adverse fate religion's day, That wash'd the clotted tear from sorrow's face, Recall'd the rambler to the heavenly race, Dispell'd the murky clouds of discontent, And read the lore of patience wheresoe'er he went."