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licians, but to make them reasonable creatures ;" to which 

 opinion Dr. Reid agrees, for two reasons. First, "because 

 there is no other branch of science, which gives such scope to 

 long and accurate trains of reasoning," by which the mind 

 Avill be gradually restrained from its natural tendency to run 

 into extraneous matter, and insensibly acquire the habit of 

 persevering pursuit and steady application. Secondly, Be- 

 cause in mathematics there is no room for authoiit/^ or pre- 

 judice of any kind whicli may give a false bias to the under- 

 standing." It may indeed be urged with some appearance 

 of plausibility, that as one of the chief requisites for a 

 poetical character is a susceptibility of the attractions of no- 

 velty, any mode of discipline which tends to remove that, 

 must be vitally injurious to the cause of poetry. But we are 

 to remark, that novelty in itself does not constitute an ob- 

 ject fit for the taste or imagination to dwell on ; it is not a 

 quality of the thing itself, properly speaking, but merely re- 

 lative to the observer, and therefore, unless it be united to the 

 inherent and permanent qualities of beauty or sublimit}^, it 

 can have but little claim on the poet's attention. No one 

 ever asserted that novelty alone was sufficient to render 

 poems, pictures or other representations agreeable, and it 

 would be difficult, if not impossible, to assign a reason, why 

 that which is thus universally rejected as a foundation for the 

 secondary, should be admitted as a constituent and original 

 cause of the primary pleasures of the imagination. ' Addison, 

 indeed, and Akenside after him, have enumerated novelty 



