- tions of probability. Genius, ardent after
novelty, will sometimes leave an old road, not because it may not lead it to its journey's end, but because it is old. There was at this time a great disposition to literary innovation, that shewing itself on subjects of serious reasoning, religion, morality, and politics, was also manifest in works of amusement. Conception far out-went actual existence and experience. The object of ingenuity appeared to be to enchain and petrify by astonishment more than to allure by pleasure, impel by profit, or guide by wisdom. There was a very prevalent disposition to question established truths, and to transcend admitted probabilities; and while serious pretenders to philosophy proposed new principles and rules for governing social and political man, literary dispensers of amusement also
