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_, a periodical founded in 1793, and exceedingly influential between that time and about 1812. Archbishop Whateley, correcting a statement in the _Life_ of Copleston by W.J. Copleston, says that it was occasioned by a review of Mant's poems in the _British Critic_[2]. But on referring to the review of these poems, which appeared in the November number of 1806, plainly the review referred to, we find nothing in it to support Whateley's assertion. That the reviews in the _British Critic_ are, however, what Copleston is parodying in the critique of _L'Allegro_ is abundantly clear, but what he says about voyages and travels and about science and recondite learning appear to have reference to articles particularly characteristic of the _Edinburgh Review_. It was not, however, till after the date of Copleston's parody that the _Edinburgh Review_ began conspicuously to illustrate what Copleston here satirises; it was not till a time more recent still that periodical literature generally exemplified in literal seriousness what Copleston intended as extravagant irony. It is interesting to compare with Copleston's remarks what Thackeray says on the same subjects in the twenty-fourth chapter of _Pendennis_, entitled 'The Pall Mall Gazette.' This brochure is evidently modelled on Swift's 'Digression Concerning Critics' in the third section of the _Tale of a Tub_, and owes something also to the _Treatise on the Bathos_ in Pope's and Swift's _Miscellanies_, as the title may have been suggested by Shaftesbury's _Advice to an Author_. The _Advice_ itself and the supplementary critique of Milton are clever and have good points, but they will not bear comparison with the satire of Swift and Pope.