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Rh “Mr Gray,” says Mr Mathias, in the Postscript to his edition of the works of that eminent Poet and Scholar, “always considered, that the Encyclopædias, and Universal Dictionaries of various kinds, with which the world now abounds so much, afforded a very unfavourable symptom of the age in regard to its literature; as no real or profound learning can be obtained but at the fountain-head, Dictionaries like these, as he thought, only served to supply a fund for the vanity, or for the affectation of general knowledge; or for the demands of company and of conversation; to which, he said, such works were fully competent.” No British Encyclopædia had appeared before Mr Gray’s death, of any considerable extent, or which, in point of execution, could be said to rank above the level of mere compilation; but the French Encyclopédie, which had been in the course of publication for a long time, and was completed some years before that event, had early attracted the notice of the learned throughout Europe; and, with all its defects, it unquestionably contains much, that might have occurred to Mr Gray, as fitted to minister to intellectual exercises of a higher order, than those to which he so arbitrarily limited the reach of such undertakings. There cannot be a doubt, besides, that much was done by our earlier Encyclopædias, limited as their scale was, to render knowledge more generally accessible and acceptable, and to give it a wider diffusion among the body of the people, than it had obtained before. The success of these works ought, therefore, to have been hailed and commended as a favourable, not an unfavourable symptom of the intelligence of the age. The passage just quoted would, indeed, warrant the suspicion, that Mr Gray considered knowledge as the exclusive appanage of the learned, and that the Republic of Letters must be viewed as in an unsound state, when the Citizens are admitted to any communion with their Superiors.

It is at any rate clear, that this eminent person had formed a very incorrect idea of the nature and ends of the publications which he censured. Encyclopædias may bring the means of liberal knowledge—of knowledge, accurate, and well digested, within the reach of thousands who would never otherwise have possessed such means, in so desirable a form. This is their object, their office, and their praise; and no one ever supposed, that they were to supersede the necessity of recurring to