Moore. BIOGRAPHICAL, HISTORICAL, AND CRITICAL PREFACE ΤΟ THE WORLD. T HIS elegant and sarcastic paper was contemporary with the ADVENTURER and the CONNOISSEUR. It was projected by Mr. ROBERT DODSLEY, and EDWARD MOORE, Esq., a writer of great taste and various abilities; and soon after its establishment, rose rapidly into fashionable importance and popularity, by the accession of many titled and distinguished contributors, all vying among each other to diversify and adorn its pages. The demand for serious essays had been supplied, almost to repletion, by the RAMBLER; and the ADVENTURER, though it promised more variety, evidently preponderated on the side of preceptive inculcation. To tread popularly in a beaten path without abandoning all pretension to originality, and to elicit novelty from trite maxims and reiterated truths, was an undertaking of equal difficulty and danger; and the writers in the WORLD prudently forbore an attempt, in which success could have been followb XXVI. |