CHAP. IV.] AR1 OP CRITICISM. 263 



CHAPTER IV. 



Two General Appendices to Tradition, viz., the Arts of 

 Teaching and Criticism. 



THERE remain two general appendages to the doctrine of 

 delivery ; the one relating to criticism, the other to school - 

 learning. For as the principal part of traditive prudence 

 turns upon the writing ; so its relative turns upon the read 

 ing of books. Now reading is either regulated by the 

 assistance of a master, or left to every one s private industry ; 

 but both depend upon criticism and school-learning. 



Criticism regards, first, the exact correcting and publish 

 ing of approved authors ; whereby the honour of such 

 authors is preserved, and the necessary assistance afforded to 

 the reader. Yet the misapplied labours and industry of 

 some have in this respect proved highly prejudicial to learn 

 ing ; for many critics have a way, when they fall upon any 

 thing they do not understand, of immediately supposing a 

 fault in the copy. Thus, in that passage of Tacitus, where a 

 certain colony pleads a right of protection in the senate, 

 Tacitus tells us they were not favourably heard ; so that the 

 ambassadors distrusting their cause, endeavoured to procure 

 the favour of Titus Vinius by a present, and succeeded ; upon 

 which Tacitus has these words : &quot; Turn dignitas et antiquitas 

 coloniaB valuit :&quot; &quot;Then the honour and antiquity of the colony 

 had weight,&quot; in allusion to the sum received.* But a consi 

 derable critic here expunges &quot;turn,&quot; and substitutes &quot;tantum,&quot; 

 which quite corrupts the sense. And from this ill practice 

 of the critics, it happens that the most corrected copies are 

 often the least correct. And to say the truth, unless a critio 



tione Rhetoricse ; &quot; and still more by his &quot; Institutions Oratorise.&quot; 

 See also Wolfgang ; Schoensleder s &quot;Apparatus Eloquentiae ;&quot; &quot;Tesmari 

 Exercitationes Rhetoricae,&quot; &c. Several French authors have likewise 

 cultivated this subject ; particularly Rapin, in his &quot; Reflexions sur 

 1 Eloquence ;&quot; Bohour, in his &quot; Maniere de bien Penser dans les Ouvrages 

 de 1 Esprit ;&quot; and his &quot;Pensdes Ingdnieuses ;&quot; Father Laray, in his 

 &quot;Art de Parler.&quot; See also M. Cassander s French translation of 

 Aristotle s Rhetorics; the anonymous pieces, entitled, &quot;L Art de 

 Penser,&quot; and &quot;L Art de Persuader ;&quot; Le Clerc s &quot; Historia Rhetoricse, &quot; 

 in his &quot; Ars Critica ;&quot; and &quot; StoUius de ArU Rhetorics,&quot; in his &quot; Iu- 

 troductio in Historiam Literariam.&quot; Shaw. 

 Hist. b. i c. as. 



