Note 537 — Chapter IV · DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

An exception may perhaps be made in favour of J. [Cornand] de La Croze’s Works of the Learned, which, translated wholly or mainly by its author from the French, began to appear monthly in August 1691, and was collected before long in a thin quarto volume. Its contents are real reviews in almost every point—down to some sharp remarks by the editor-reviewer on plagiarisms by the Athenian Mercury, and complaints of the absence of indices to lessen the labour of reviewing. The books reviewed are, as a rule, of no great interest; but the summaries of their contents are generally good, and the views advanced are at least sometimes made the subject of passably argumentative discussion.