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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 alsoa 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-esthetical 
éssays,—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 a priori 
inquiries into the princrpLes 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 @ 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 peTain, 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, on the Sanscrit 
