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criticism, in literature and in all the fine arts. For we, in so far 

 as we are an Academy of Literature, are also a Court of Criticism; — ' 

 Criticism which is to Beauty, what Science is to Nature. Between 

 the divine of genius and the human of enjoyment, we hold a kind 

 of middle place ; creating not, nor merely feeling, but aspiring to 

 understand : and yet incapable of rightly understanding, unless we 

 at the same time sympathize. 



To express myself then in colder and more technical terms, I 

 should wish that metaphysico- ethical and metaphysico-aesthetical 

 Assays, — those which treat generally of the beautiful in action and in 

 art, and are connected rather with the study of the beauty-loving 

 mind itself, than of the particular products or objects which that mind 

 may generate or contemplate, — should be considered as entitled to the 

 foremost place among our literary memoirs. After these d priori 

 inquiries into the principles of beauty, which are rather prepa- 

 ratory to criticism than criticism itself, or which, at least, deserve 

 to be called criticism universal, should be ranked, I think, that 

 important but d posteriori and inductive species of criticism, 

 which, from the study of some actual master-pieces, collects certain 

 great rules as valid, without deducing them as necessary from 

 any higher principles. And last, yet still deserving of high honour, 

 I would rank those researches of detail, those particulars, and 

 helps, and applications of criticism, which, if they be, in a large 

 philosophical view, subordinate and subsidiary to principles, and 

 to rules of universal validity, yet form perhaps the larger part of the 

 habitual and ordinary studies of men of erudition ; such as the 

 differences and affinities of languages, and the explication of ob- 

 scure passages in ancient authors. Whatever metaphysical pre- 

 ference I may feel for inquiries of the two former kinds, no one, I 

 hope, will misconceive me as speaking of this last class of 

 researches with any other feelings than those of profound respect, 

 and of desire and hope to see them cultivated here; nor as present- 

 ing other than hearty congratulations to the Academy on the fact, 

 that whereas no single paper on Literature appeared in our last 

 volume, two memoirs, interesting and erudite, have been presented 

 to us, and probably are by this time printed, to be in readiness for 

 our next publication ; — one, on the Punic Passage in Plautus, by a 

 near and dear relative of my own; and the other, qn the Sanscrit 



