Prefixed to this volume is a curious and fantastic frontispiece, strikingly characteristic of Dunton’s genius. At the four corners are representations of Athens, Rome, Oxford, and Cambridge. At a long table are seated the members of the Athenian Society, twelve in number, Dunton evidently in the middle, and Samuel Wesley, the only clergyman, at his side. Before the table are all sorts of characters presenting their enigmas for solution. One is a faithless lady in a mask, come to inquire how she may convert her faithless husband to a sense of propriety. Another, as a fashionable coquette, with a spaniel in her lap, presents to the learned Athenians her square-sized billet, and awaits with self-complacent impudence an answer. A moon-struck lawyer and an honest Jack Tar eagerly ask for counsel; while a disciple of Euclid, compasses in hand, and studying a globe, longs for a mathematical solution. A poor parson inquires how he is to get a living; and a whole rout of fishwives, thieves, and bad characters clamour for advice; while, before a tripod, filled with burning chestnuts, is a monkey, with a cat in his paws, making her pick out the nuts on his behalf, and thereby showing the cautiousness of the Athenians in answering questions likely to burn their own fingers. “The Young Student’s Library” contains the substance of above one hundred volumes, many of them folio in size. The extracting and condensing of the contents of such a mass of books must have been a work of enormous labour. Very able synopses are given of above eighty different works.[69] And, in addition to these reviews, there are two most elaborate articles written by Samuel Wesley—one, entitled “An Essay upon all sorts of Learning,” and the other, “A Discourse concerning the Antiquity, Divine Original, and Authority of the Points, Vowels, and Accents that are placed to the Hebrew Bible;” and, in close connexion with the latter, are six Critical Disquisitions upon the various editions of the Scriptures, the Polyglot Bible, Hebrew Grammars, Hebrew Lexicons, and Hebrew Poetry, all of which are probably the productions of Mr Wesley’s pen. ----- Footnote 69: The titles of these works will be found in Appendix C. -----