or
speaking with my natural force.

But is this misery, Mr. Rambler, never to cease; have I spent my life in
study only to become the sport of the ignorant, and debarred myself from
all the common enjoyments of youth to collect ideas which must sleep in
silence, and form opinions which I must not divulge? Inform me, dear
Sir, by what means I may rescue my faculties from these shackles of
cowardice, how I may rise to a level with my fellow-beings, recall
myself from this langour of involuntary subjection to the free exertion
of my intellects, and add to the power of reasoning the liberty of
speech.

I am, Sir, &c.

VERECUNDULUS.

No. 158. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1751.

Grammatici certunt, et adhuc sub judice lis est. HOR. Ar. Poet. 78.

--Criticks yet contend,
And of their vain disputings find no end. FRANCIS.

Criticism, though dignified from the earliest ages by the labours of men
eminent for knowledge and sagacity, and, since the revival of polite
literature, the favourite study of European scholars, has not yet
attained the certainty and stability of science. The rules hitherto
received are seldom drawn from any settled principle or self-evident
postulate, or adapted to the natural and invariable constitution of
things; but will be found, upon examination, the arbitrary edicts of
legislators, authorised only by themselves, who, out of various means by
which the same end may be attained, selected such as happened to occur
to their own reflection, and then, by a law which idleness and timidity
were too willing to obey, prohibited new experiments of wit, restrained
fancy from the indulgence of her innate inclination to hazard and
adventure, and condemned all future flights of genius to pursue the path
of the Meonian eagle.

This authority may be more justly opposed, as it is apparently derived
from them whom they endeavour to control; for we owe few of the rules of
writing to the acuteness of criticks, who have generally no other merit
than that, having read the works of great authors with attention, they
have observed the arrangement of their matter, or the graces of their
expression, and then expected honour and reverence for precepts which
they never could have invented; so that practice has introduced rules,
rather than rules have directed practice.

For this reason the laws of every species of writing have been settled
by the ideas of him who first raised it to reputation, without inquiry
whe