text:  What explanation can be given? Are the affairs of Dulness conducted in some respects by the same rules which obtain in the Commonwealth of Wit? Is it held there as here that the first step to be taken in order to forming a judgment of any book is to read it? Was it prudently considered that the dullest of critics can read only as long as his eyes are open? and that the function of judge must incessantly bring under his cognisance papaverous volumes with which only a super-human endowment of vigilance could hope successfully to contend? so that the goddess is driven by the necessity of the game to admit within the circuit of her somnolent sway a virtue to which she is naturally and peculiarly hostile? Or are we mistaken in supposing that vigour of mind really qualifies for hearing a dull book through? Is it dulness itself that the most ably listens to dulness? We are out of our element we presume for we arrive at no satisfactory solution