t, not from reason, but from
prejudice. Some seem to admire indiscriminately whatever has been long
preserved, without considering that time has sometimes co-operated with
chance; all, perhaps, are more willing to honour past than present
excellence; and the mind contemplates genius through the shades of age,
as the eye surveys the sun through artificial opacity. The great
contention of criticism is to find the faults of the moderns, and the
beauties of the ancients. While an author is yet living, we estimate his
powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead we rate them by his
best.

To works, however, of which the excellence is not absolute and definite,
but gradual and comparative; to works not raised upon principles
demonstrative and scientifick, but appealing wholly to observation and
experience, no other test can be applied than length of duration and
continuance of esteem. What mankind have long possessed they have often
examined and compared; and if they persist to value the possession, it
is because frequent comparisons have confirmed opinion in its favour.
As, among the works of nature, no man can properly call a river deep, or
a mountain high, without the knowledge of many mountains, and many
rivers; so, in the productions of genius, nothing can be styled
excellent till it has been compared with other works of the same kind.
Demonstration immediately displays its power, and has nothing to hope or
fear from the flux of years; but works tentative and experimental must
be estimated by their proportion to the general and collective ability
of man, as it is discovered in a long succession of endeavours. Of the
first building that was raised, it might be, with certainty, determined
that it was round or square; but whether it was spacious or lofty must
have been referred to time. The Pythagorean scale of numbers was at once
discovered to be perfect; but the poems of Homer we yet know not to
transcend the common limits of human intelligence, but by remarking,
that nation after nation, and century after century, has been able to do
little more than transpose his incidents, new name his characters, and
paraphrase his sentiments.

The reverence due to writings that have long subsisted, arises,
therefore, not from any credulous confidence in the superiour wisdom of
past ages, or gloomy persuasion of the degeneracy of mankind, but is the
consequence of acknowledged and indubitable positions, that what has
been lo