 Johnson and Christie's prospectus describes its reviewers as "the HISTORIANS of the Republic of Letters" [emphasis in original].Literary scholar Paul Keen has described the Republic of Letters as a vision of society in which "all rational individuals could have their say, and in which an increasingly enlightened reading public would be able to judge the merit of different arguments for themselves".The practical goal of the "Analytical Review" was to facilitate this society by summarizing serious new and foreign publications in great depth so that intelligent readers might form their own opinions.