The Gentleman's Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, for the Year ...

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154849

J. B. NICHOLS and son, prINTERS, 25, PARLIAMENT STREET.

PREFACE.

Ir is rather in compliance with a custom long established, than for the purpose of imparting any particular information to our readers, that we continue our addresses to them, at this portion of the year, on the subject of the Magazine: more especially, as we have fully communicated to them in our previous prefaces, the system which we have laid down for its management, and which we believe to be most conducive to the purposes for which it was established, and which it continues to promote. We think that nothing has occurred in the last half year, either connected with our literary or antiquarian departments, which demands any peculiar notice. Many valuable books have passed in review before us; and some points of literature, neither incurious nor unimportant, have been discussed either by ourselves, or by our correspondents. That in all cases we have satisfied authors, whose works we have reviewed, of the justice of our decisions, it would be vain to expect; for what parent can look with impartial eyes on his own offspring? but we venture to assert, that while not forgetting that the public has a right to expect from us an opinion formed with care, and delivered with impartiality; we have also endeavoured to take the more favourable side in our critical judgments; and not retard the exertions, or repress the hopes of those, who from various motives, and with various success, are honourably engaged in the field of literature. These observations may apply more peculiarly to the youthful aspirants after fame, whose numbers, particularly of the gentler sex, we observe are rapidly increasing, and whose compositions form no inconsiderable portion of the productions of the press. On

thein, who perhaps will listen to us more willingly than their elders,
we wish earnestly to impress the great necessity, if they wish to be
distinguished among their numerous competitors, of severely
reviewing their own works, before they trust them to be reviewed
by others. This plan, honestly pursued, will blunt the shafts of
the severest criticism, and inspire them with a well-grounded con-
fidence in the success of their publications. Let them recollect,
that the character of a work is estimated not by its quantity, but
quality; let them not be ambitious, juvenili levitate, of for ever
filling the press with their name: the naturalists tell us, that the
mouse, and other insignificant animals, produce a numerous pro-
geny at a litter-the lioness but two; but then those two are LIONS.
June, 1841.
S. URBAN.