so fully capable of supplying the place of those studies which usually engross the attention of our novel readers; and these are no other than the instructive and entertaining histories of Mr. THOMAS THUMB, Mr. JOHN HICKATHRIFT, and sundry other celebrated worthies; a true and faithful account of whose adventures and achievements, may be had by the curious, and public in general, price two-pence gilt, at Mr. Newbery's, St. Paul's Churchyard, and at some other gentleman's whose name I do not now recollect, the bouncing B. Shoe-lane.

I am well aware that full many are the opinions I shall have to combat against in behalf of my recommendation. Many there will be who will ungenerously cavil at the size of my protegés; armed with a sort of cowardly criticism, which though it dares not venture any strictures on a bulky folio, or scan the merits of even a tolerable corpulent quarto, yet thinks itself fully competent to give a decided opinion on so small an offspring of literature, and to persecute an unprotected sixteenmo with the most unrelenting severity.

To shew, however, the very high estimation, in which I am confident, they deserve to be held by the literary world, I shall not condescend to compare them with those precious farragos, in the room of which I intend introducing them to my fellowcitizens. Far higher are my ideas of the comparative excellence of Mr. Newbery's little booksand more especially of the two to which I have before alluded.-In the heroes of these, a candid and impartial critic will readily agree with me, that we find a very strong resemblance to those who are immortalized in Homeric song; that in Hickathrift we see pourtrayed the spirit, the prowess, and every great quality of Achilles; and in Thumb, the prudence, the caution, the patience, the perseverance, of Ulysses. There is, however, one peculiar ad

vantage, which the histories of the modern worthies enjoy over their ancient originals, which is that of uniting the great and sublime of epic grandeur, with the little and the low of common life; and of tempering the fiercer and more glaring colours of the marvellous and the terrible, with the softer shades of the domestic and the familiar. Where, in either of the great originals, shall we find so pleasing an assemblage of tender ideas, so interesting a picture of domestic employments,-as the following sketch of the night preceding that in which Tom Thumb and his brethren were to be purposely lost in the wood?

'Now it was nine o'clock, and all the children, after eating a piece of bread and butter, were put to bed. But little Tom did not eat his-but put it in his pocket. And now all the children were fast asleep in their beds-but little Tom could not sleep for thinking of what he had heard the night before so he got up, and put on his shoes and stockings,' &c.

How forcibly does this passage bring to the mind of every classical reader, the picture which Homer draws of Agamemnon, in the tenth book of the Iliad.

Αλλ' ουκ Ατρείδην Αγαμέμνονα, ποιμενα λαῶν,
Υπνος εχε γλυκερος, πολλα φρεσιν ορμαίνοντα, &c.

The chiefs before their vessels lay,
And left in sleep the labours of the day:

All but the king; with various thoughts opprest,
His country's cares lay rolling in his breast, &c.
He rose

And on his feet the shining sandals bound, &c.

This vigilant conduct in brooding a sleepless night over embryo expeditions, and cautiously providing against future necessities by the pocketing of his bread and butter, is at least equal to any trait in the character of Ulysses.-Nor is it in point of

character only, that the resemblance between this work and the two great poems of antiquity is discernible. Here we find also in their fullest perfection

Speciosa-Miracula rerum,

Antiphaten, Scyllamque, et cum cyclope Charybdin.
Antiphates his hideous feast devours, &c.-FRANCIS.

To say nothing of the form of the Ogre, which is painted in a style infinitely beyond the Polypheme of Homer to pass over the terrible poetic imagery with which his first speech of fee, faw, fum, is replete-it must I think be readily allowed, the stratagem by which Tom releases himself and his brethren from the monster's power (by taking the crowns of gold from the heads of the little Ogres and Ogresses, and putting them on their own: whereby the giant comes and kills his own children'), is far more poetical, far more noble, than the pitiful escape of Ulysses and his companions, under the sheeps' bellies, and the paltry contrivance of Ovdels. But there is another circumstance where the fictions of the two poets bear a still nearer resemblance to each other. The learned reader will easily guess that I mean the march of the Ogre, in the third chapter of Tom Thumb, and that of Neptune, in the thirteenth book of the Iliad. To enable my readers to draw the comparison better, I shall transcribe both.

There the Ogre,' says my author, 'called for his seven-leagued boots, in which he journeyed, and he put them on; and he took one, two, three steps, and at the third he came to the dark cave where little Tom was.'

Of Neptune's passage from Samothrace to Troy, Homer says,

Τρὶς μὲν ὀρέξατ' ἰὼν· τὸ δὲ τέτρατον, ἵκετο τέκμως,
Αἰγὰς

From realm to realm three ample strides he took,
And at the fourth the distant Egæ shook.

Which,' says his commentator, 'is pretty near a degree at each step.'-But let the reader candidly examine both the passages, and make fair allowance for the unavoidable difference in sound, of the distant Egæ,' and the dark cave where little Tom was,' and I doubt not but my author will claim at least an equal share of admiration.

But it would be an endless task to point out every latent beauty, every unnoticed elegance with which these productions are interspersed. Not to enter therefore into a comparative view of the characters of Hickathrift and Achilles; to omit noticing the affecting and solemn invocation of the princess Cinderella to the Bean her counsellor, beginning,' Bean, Bean, little Bean, I charge thee in the name of the fairy Truflo' (which, by-the-bye, justifies the opinion of Pythagoras with regard to the reverence due to this vegetable); to omit this, I say, and other innumerable passages, equally worthy of notice, I shall hasten to inform my fellow-citizens, that in compliance with my advice, my bookseller proposes very soon substituting in the room of his present catalogue, a list of all the productions of this kind, which can be procured either at Mr. Newbery's or the bouncing B.

And I doubt not but I shall in a very short time have the satisfaction to see the generality of my fellow-citizens, running through them with the most eager avidity, from beginning to end-from Once upon a time,' to 'lived very happy afterwards :' fully convinced, that such works as could bear a competition with the strains of Homer, would be degraded by any comparison with the silly effusions of nonsense and sentiment-convinced too, if the examples for the purposes of morality be considered, that a character which gleaned the several excellences of

all the Edwards, the Sir Harrys, and the Pamelas of novel-writers-would be but a poor competitor with one that joined in itself the patience and chastity of Cinderella, the prudence of Thumb, and the heroism of Hickathrift.-B.

No 31. MONDAY, JUNE 18, 1787.

Opere in longo fas est obrepere somnum.-HORACE. In a long work an author once may dose.-NAN. HAVING an idle hour the other evening, and being in one of those miscellaneous humours in which our sole object is to kill time; I happened to fix on a moral essay on human nature, as the most effectual and expeditious means of dispatching him. As I turned over the pages, I could not but remark, how ingeniously its philanthropic author had endeavoured to put his readers out of humour with themselves, by proving to them, that in spite of their own endeavours, they must inevitably be greater fools or knaves than their grandfathers.

From the contemplation of those weeping philosophers, my reflection naturally led me to those ingenious projectors, who with more benevolence, though if possible less effect, have devoted their literary labours to the reformation of a vicious age; and formed such sublime and comprehensive projects for reducing human nature to its primitive state of purity.

The recollection of the deep-laid projects for the abolition of Christianity, the consolidation of Turks, Jews, and Gentiles, the conversion of the grand