haunt us with similar apparitions, and to describe them with a
corresponding tumor of words, we conceive it high time to step forward
and abate a nuisance which threatens to become a besetting evil, unless
checked in its outset.

Political changes were not the sole cause of the rapid degeneracy in
letters that followed the Augustan era of Rome. Similar corruptions and
decay have succeeded to the intellectual eminence of other nations; and
we might be almost led to conclude, that mental as well as physical
power, after attaining a certain perfection, became weakened by
expansion, and sunk into a state of comparative imbecility, until time
and circumstance gave it a new progressive impetus. One great cause of
this deterioration is the insatiable thirst for novelty, which, becoming
weary even of excellence, will "sate itself in a celestial bed, and prey
on garbage." In the torpidity produced by an utter exhaustion of sensual
enjoyment, the Arreoi Club of Otaheite is recorded to have found a
miserable excitement, by swallowing the most revolting filth; and the
jaded intellectual appetites of more civilized communities will
sometimes seek a new stimulus in changes almost as startling. Some
adventurous writer, unable to obtain distinction among a host of
competitors, all better qualified than himself to win legitimate
applause, strikes out a fantastic or monstrous innovation; and arrests
the attention of many who would fall asleep over monotonous excellence.
Imitators are soon found;--fashion adopts the new folly;--the old
standard of perfection is deemed stale and obsolete;--and thus, by
degrees, the whole literature of a country becomes changed and
deteriorated. It appears to us, that we are now labouring in a crisis of
this nature. In our last Number, we noticed the revolution in our
poetry; the transition from the lucid terseness and exquisite polish of
Pope and Goldsmith, to the rambling, diffuse, irregular, and imaginative