were men whose minds had been trained in a world which had passed away. They gave place to a younger generation of wits; and of that generation, from Dryden down to D’Urfey, the common characteristic was hard-hearted, shameless, swaggering licentiousness, at once inelegant and inhuman.” Samuel Wesley’s “Epistle concerning Poetry” is ingenious and able. The editor of Dr Adam Clarke’s Miscellaneous Works observes: “Such a poem as this may be supposed to have suggested Lord Byron’s ‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.’” We would add, that perhaps it suggested a much earlier work, the “Dunciad” of Alexander Pope, which was first published in 1727, twenty-seven years after the publication of Wesley’s “Epistle.” At all events, both Pope and Byron would have acted better if, like Samuel Wesley, they had been guided by justice, instead of being goaded by spleen, and if their works, like his, had contained more of criticism and less of spite. It is difficult, without giving extracts, to furnish a just idea of Mr Wesley’s poem. The following are some of the topics that are taken up and sketched—viz., Genius, Wit, Judgment, Invention, Memory, Learning, Conversation, Style, Reading, Measure, Numbers, Pauses, Quantity, Rhyme, Epic poetry, Tragedy, the Ode, and Satire. In dwelling on these points, Wesley takes the opportunity of referring to the most popular writers of poetry to illustrate his meaning. Chaucer’s lines are so rough and so unequal in their flow, that to describe their _measure_ is impossible. Spencer, with his “vast genius” and “noble thoughts,” is a master of English _quantity_; but his stanzas are cramped, and his _rhymes_ affected by antique words. Dryden, with his “matchless skill,” is highly praised; but, at the same time, Wesley charges him with having “made vice pleasing, and damnation shine;” and entreats him, after “sixty years of lewdness,” to repent and seek God’s forgiveness. Blackmore is eulogised by Wesley, at the time when all the wits were treating him with ridicule; for few excelled him in writing poetic fables, and each of his pages is “big with Virgil’s manly thought.” But, instead of giving quotations descriptive of men, we give the following, which, to say the least, is thoughtful and ingenious. The reader will perceive that the lines are intended to be a description of the human head:—