I thought that they intended a covert sarcasm at their own projects.

Their institution was a literary Dartmoor scheme;--a plan for forcing into cultivation the waste lands of intellect,--for raising poetical produce, by means of bounties, from soil too meagre to have yielded any returns in the natural course of things.

The plan for the cultivation of Dartmoor has, I hear, been abandoned.

I hope that this may be an omen of the fate of the Society.
In truth, this seems by no means improbable.

They have been offering for several years the rewards which the king placed at their disposal, and have not, as far as I can learn, been able to find in their box one composition which they have deemed worthy of publication.