A London weekly paper chiefly run by George Colman[?] and Bonnell Thornton[?] as a 'plebeian' counterpart to Edward Moore[?]'s The World, a periodical of about the same time, which dealt more with the interests of aristocrats.
James Boswell says in his Life of Johnson, "I mentioned the periodical paper called 'THE CONNOISSEUR'. He said it wanted matter. — No doubt it had not the deep thinking of Johnson's writings. But surely it has just views of the surface of life, and a very sprightly manner. His opinion of 'THE WORLD' was not much higher than of 'THE CONNOISSEUR'."
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump