George Chalmers

The Caledonia is to the Anglo-Saxon History [of Sharon Turner] what Stonehenge is to a carved font in an old cathedral. It is one of the children of Anak. In deep research, and heaping together of matter, the Britannia of Camden fades away before it. A life, and a long and busy one, was almost exclusively devoted to this stupendous work: the author lived to complete it, and no more. The concluding volume is still in manuscript; and no bookseller has appeared willing to hazard the expense of giving to the world a thousand pages quarto. This is one of those cases in which literature is not its own reward; and had Chalmers lived in any land under the sun save this, his Caledonia would have been published by the government, and the learned author pensioned.