3o8 On the Nature and Utility of Eloquence. 



vated as this fcience is by fo many of the moft 

 eminent members of the Society, I fhould be 

 fomewhat furprized if the philofophy of the fine 

 arts were held in much eitimation. I never 

 could, and I hope I never fhall allow myfelf to 

 fpeak, or think difrefpeftfully of other men's 

 purfuits, merely becaufe they differ from mine j 

 but furely I may be permitted to fay, that the 

 ftudy of that grand and feducing fcience, Natural 

 Philofophy, has a tendency to excite in its fol- 

 lowers, low ideas of arts as ufeful as any that can 

 be founded even upon its nobleft difcoveries. It 

 is true, that in diftinguifhing the arts from each 

 other, the fine arts have been ufually oppofed 

 to the ufeful ; but is not this improper ? and 

 would it not be better to confider them as divi- 

 ded into the liberal and the mechanical ? Had I 

 thought eloquence to be a fine art only, in the 

 common fenfe of that term, I Ihould, in the firft 

 inftance, have probably faved myfelf the trouble 

 of thinking or writing about it at all, but, in the 

 fecond, I ihould certainly have fpared the So- 

 ciety the trouble of reading what I had written. 

 Eloquence, fo far as it is an art, is undoubtedly 

 claffed with propriety, among the fine arts, fince 

 the means it ufes to effed its purpofes are not 

 mechanical, and inafmuch as it is fo con- 

 ftantly connefted with the ftrongeft exercifes of 

 the imagination j but furely it can never be ex- 

 cluded from an eminent place among the ufeful 



artsj 



