Note 768 — Chapter VII · (continued 2)

Late in the seventeenth century, an attempt was first made in England to establish literary journals. Hallam's Lit. of Europe, vol. iii. p. 539; and Dibdin's Bibliomania, 1842, p. 16. But reviews, as we now understand the word, meaning a critical publication, were unknown before the accession of George II.; but, about the middle of his reign, they began to increase. Compare Wright's England under the House of Hanover, 1848, vol. i. p. 304, with Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. iii. pp. 507, 508. At an earlier period, the functions of reviews were performed, as Monk says, by pamphlets. Monk's Life of Bentley, vol. i. p. 112.