at these severe characters generally set up the trade of _Critics_;
without attending to the just maxim of Pope, that

Ten censure wrong, for one that writes amiss.

"With them, the least deviation from precise correctness, the most
venial trippings, the smallest inattention paid to doubtful rules and
equivocal positions of criticism, inflames their anger, and calls
forth their invectives. Regardless of the sage maxims of Cicero,
Quintilian, and Horace, they not only disdain the sober rules which
their ancient brethren have wisely laid down, and hold in contempt
the voice of the public,[84] but, forgetting the subject which they
have undertaken to criticise, they push the author out of his seat,
quietly sit in it themselves, and fancy they entertain you by the
gravity of their deportment, and their rash usurpation of the royal
monosyllable 'Nos.'[85] This solemn pronoun, or rather 'plural
style,'[86] my dear Philemon, is oftentimes usurped by a half-starved
little _I_, who sits immured in the dusty recess of a garret, and who
has never known the society nor the language of a gentleman; or it is
assumed by a young graduate, just settled in his chambers, and flushed
with the triumph of his degree of 'B.A.', whose 'fond conceyte' [to
borrow Master Francis Thynne's[87] terse style,] is, to wrangle for an
asses shadowe, or to seke a knott in a rushe!'

[Footnote 84: "Interdum vulgus rectum videt:" says
Horace.--_Epist. lib._ ii. _ad. Augustum_, v. 63.]

[Footnote 85: Vide RYMERI _Foedera_--passim.]

[Footnote 86: A very recent, and very respectable, authority
has furnished me with this expression.]

[Footnote 87: See Mr. Todd's _Illustrations of Gower and
Chaucer_, p. 10.]

"For my part," continued Lysander, speaking with the most unaffected
seriousness--"for my part, nothing delights me more than modesty and
diffidence, united with 'strong good sense, lively imagination, and
exquisite sensibility,'[88] whether in an author or a critic. When I
call to mind that our greatest sages have concluded their labours
with doubt, and an avowal of their ignorance; when I see how carefully
and reverently they have pushed forward their most successful
inquiries; when I see the great Newton pausing and perplexed in the
vast world of planets, comets, and constellations, which were, in a
measure, of his own creation--I learn to soften the asperity of my
critical anathemas, and to allow to an a