The custom adopted by several learned Societies or Acadedemies abroad, which requires, that a professed panegyric on every one of the Members, after his death, should first be read before the Academy, and then printed in the history of their transactions, has not met with a general approbation, either in England or in this country. For although characters have frequently appeared in the republic of Letters, whose shining talents have, with sufficient propriety, employed the power of eloquence in their praise, every Member of an Academy cannot be deemed the proper subject of a laboured encomium. The British character, naturally shy and reserved, is apt to look with an eye of suspicion, upon any discourse that comes decorated with the pompous title of Eloge.