[These notes were made in 1983; I read this in the 1792 3rd edition; the authors are John Aikin and Anna Laetitia Barbauld:]. Imagine my delight when I got past the unpromising-looking library binding and discovered, within, this delightful little 18th-century collection of generalist and literary essays by a pair of fine minds. I can understand why it went into three editions, for despite the fact that it is exactly what the title says, and despite the fact that it is largely didactic material, I cannot imagine a pleasanter way of learning than through the lucid and personal prose of these two (brother and sister, I think). Within the covers are contained meditations on most of the primary concerns of the day - literary genres, Ossian, Pleasure derived from Objects of Terror (including a marvellous little early Gothic fragment), Renaissance literature, utility vs. beauty, Catholicism, Devotional Taste. It struck me as I read the analyses of various parts of the human situation, that while the commonplaces of the 18th-century system of thought became quickly debased and justly risible in popular fiction, yet in their original and forcible expression (as in these essays) there is much we can learn. Several times I caught myself thinking, not "how appropriate this sentiment is to the time," but simply "how true!" Of course, there is an unspeakable arrogance and pomposity about the infallible superiority of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism which seems, alas, indivisible from the absolutism and clearness of conception which make this age so attractive to me. But even that arrogance is tempered in the case of really thoughtful minds, and I find Aikin and Barbauld interesting (in the 18th-century sense!) not only as Scott's spiritual ancestors, but, to a large extent, as my own.
