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In 1768 he had his comedy, The Good Natured Man, produced at Covent Garden Theatre, where it achieved a fair measure of success and brought him in £400. In 1770 he repeated his triumph as a poet with The Deserted Village. He wrote a History of Animated Nature, a History of England, and a History of Rome, all compilations couched in that easy style of which he was master.
If future ages happened to record nothing else about Socrates except that he owned his title to be the wisest of men because he knew that he knew nothing, they would be able to deduce from that the height and energy of his civilisation, the glory that was Greece. The credit of such random compilations as that which "E.S.S." and Mr. George Allen have just effected is quite secure.
His abilities, which would probably have enabled him to have excelled in any kind of learning, were chiefly employed, as his station required, on polite literature, in which he arrived at very uncommon knowledge; which, however, appears rather from judicious compilations, than original productions.
I don't mean that I buy all the trashy compilations on my special subjects, but I try to have all the works of any real importance relating to them, old as well as new. In the following compartment you will find the great authors in all the languages I have mastered, from Homer and Hesiod downward to the last great English name.
FRENCH PERIODICALS. A Parisian correspondent of the London Literary Gazette observes, that if we exclude the Revue des Deux Mondes a, sort of cross between the English Quarterly and the monthlies, if we exclude also a few dry scientific periodicals, and one or two theatrical or musical newspapers, we shall seek in vain for any Quarterly, or Blackwood, or Art Union, or Literary Gazette; and that even the periodicals and journals which make the nearest approach to the weekly, monthly, or quarterly publications of England, are either wretched compilations, or abominably ill-written and ill-printed.
GUARDIAN. "Nothing can be better than the spirit mid temper in which Mr. VAUX has written, and he appears to have completely accomplished his object in the composition of the book, which will assuredly take rank among the best and ablest compilations of the day." NONCONFORMIST. "A work more instructive and entertaining could scarcely have been produced for the objects specifically intended."
Only learned compilations of recondite legend and frigid declamation, almost unintelligible from the rare and obsolete words with which they were crowded, were sent forth under the name of plays. The Cassandra or Alexandra of Lycophron is the only specimen that has come to us. Its thorny difficulties deter the reader, but Fox speaks of it as breathing a rich vein of melancholy.
In the mediæval period, as he remarks, the want of capacity to discern probable truths was a very great drawback from the value of their compilations.
Yet the codes of the most celebrated kings are very small, and were little more than compilations of immemorial customs.
The use of these compilations is to assist researchers in collecting documents. Scholars set themselves to perform, once for all, tasks of search and classification from which, thanks to them, the public will henceforth be free. Documents may be grouped according to their date, according to their place of origin, according to their contents, according to their form.
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