405 



severely criticised ; and likewise in defiance of the 

 restrictions and limitations expressed in the very 

 page that was quoted, and in the two that immedi- 

 ately preceded it. A common reader may certainly, 

 without being called to account for it, skip over 

 as many pages as he chooses, and forget those he 

 has read : but a professed critic, who is likewise 

 an adversary, has by no means the same privilege: 

 he must neither skip, nor forget, nor argue as if 

 lie had neither read, nor remembered any thing, 

 but the passage which he attacks. One of these 

 cases must apply to Mr. Knight, and 1 leave them 

 to his choice : either he never read the two pages 

 immediately preceding that which he quoted ; or he 

 forgot their contents ; or, having read and remem- 

 bered, he chose to pay no sort of regard to them. 



I ought perhaps to have been aware, that al- 

 though an intelligent, attentive, and unprejudiced 

 reader might keep my restrictions in view, as well 

 as the general spirit and intention of the author, 

 yet that such readers are not the most numerous : 

 an alteration which 1 have made in the present 

 edition, will, I trust, render the restrictions less 

 necessary. In the former one, I had set down 

 the principles or qualities of the beautiful, as they 

 were enumerated by themselves in Mr. Burke's 

 Inquiry ; in this, I have stated them, as he has, 

 in another part of his work, recapitulated and 

 compared them with those of the sublime. The 

 principles are, of course, essentially the same : 

 put from the difference in the manner of express- 



