- AN 



• ESSAY 



ON 



THE SUBJECT PROPOSED 



BT - 



THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY, 



" Whether, and how far, the pursuits of Scientific, and Fo- 

 lite Literature, assist, or obstruct, each other." 



If we can direct the lights we derive from the exalted speculations of philosophy 

 upon the humbler field of the imagination, we may not only communicate to the 

 taste a sort of philosophical solidity, but we may reflect back upon the severer 

 sciences some of the graces and elegances of taste, without which the greatest pror 

 ticicncy in those sciences will always have the appearance of something illiberal. 

 ^ Burke's Introduction to Treatise on Sublime and Beautiful. 



Among the many errors of the understanding, by which 

 the learned have been misled in their conclusions, or dis- 

 tracted in their attempts at more cautious investigation, few 

 have been of greater injury to the cause of truth, than the 

 n)istake of a concomitant for a cause, of a casual for a 

 necessary connection, and a fortuitous contiguity in point of 

 time for som£ fixed and established relation in the great sys- 



