of English criticism, and to mark an era in the history of English prose
composition. It was incomparably the best purely critical treatise which
had hitherto appeared in our language, both synthetically in its
definition and application of principles, and particularly in its lucid,
exact, and purely discriminating analysis. It was also the most striking
and successful illustration of what may be called the new prose style, or
that style which, initiated by Hobbes and developed by Sprat, Cowley, and
Denham[1] blended the ease and plasticity of colloquy with the solidity
and dignity of rhetoric, of that style in which Dryden was soon to become
a consummate master.

The _Advice to a Young Reviewer_ brings us into a very different sphere
of criticism, and has indeed a direct application to our own time. It was
written by Edward Copleston, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's and Bishop of
Llandaff. Born in February 1776 at Offwell, in Devonshire, Copleston
gained in his sixteenth year a scholarship at Corpus Christi College,
Oxford. After carrying off the prize for Latin verse, he was elected in
1795 Fellow of Oriel. In 1800, having been ordained priest, he became
Vicar of St. Mary's. In 1802 he was elected Professor of Poetry, in which
capacity he delivered the lectures subsequently published under the title
of _Praelectiones Academicae_--a favourite book of Cardinal Newman's. In
1814 he succeeded Dr. Eveleigh as Provost of Oriel. In 1826 he was made
Dean of Chester, in 1828 Bishop of Llandaff and Dean of St. Paul's. He
died at Llandaff, on October 14th, 1849. Copleston is one of the fathers
of modern Oxford, and from his provostship date many of the reforms which
transformed the University of Gibbon and Southey into the University of
Whateley, of Newman, of Keble, and of Pusey. The brochure which is
printed here was written when Copleston was Fellow and Tutor of Oriel. It
was immediately inspired, not, as is commonly supposed, by the critiques
in the _Edinburgh Review_, but by the critiques in the _British Critic_,