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persons here meant, to insinuate that there are no proper judges ofwriting, or to endeavour to exclude from the commonwealth ofliterature any of those noble critics to whose labours the learnedworld are so greatly indebted. Such were Aristotle, Horace, andLonginus, among the antients, Dacier and Bossu among the French, andsome perhaps among us; who have certainly been duly authorised toexecute at least a judicial authority _in foro literario_.But without ascertaining all the proper qualifications of a critic,which I have touched on elsewhere, I think I may very boldly object tothe censures of any one past upon works which he hath not himselfread. Such censurers as these, whether they speak from their own guessor suspicion, or from the report and opinion of others, may properlybe said to slander the reputation of the book they condemn.Such may likewise be suspected of deserving this character, who,without assigning any particular faults, condemn the whole in generaldefamatory terms; such as vile, dull, d--d stuff, &c., andparticularly by the use of the monosyllable low; a word which becomesthe mouth of no critic who is not RIGHT HONOURABLE.Again, though there may be some faults justly assigned in the work,yet, if those are not in the most essential parts, or if they arecompensated by greater beauties, it will savour rather of the maliceof a slanderer than of the judgment of a true critic to pass a severesentence upon the whole, merely on account of some vicious part. Thisis directly contrary to the sentiments of Horace:_Verum ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucisOffendor maculis, quas aut incuria fudit,Aut humana parum cavit natura----_But where the beauties, more in number, shine,I am not angry, when a casual line(That with some trivial faults unequal flows)A careless hand or human frailty shows.--MR FRANCIS.For, as Martial says, _Aliter non fit, Avite, liber_. No book can beotherwise composed. All beauty of character, as well as ofcountenance, and indeed of everything human, is to be tried in thismanner. Cruel indeed would it be if such a work as this history, whichhath employed some thousands of hours in the composing, should beliable to be condemned, because some particular chapter, or perhapschapters, may be obnoxious to very just and sensible objections. Andyet nothing is more common than the most rigorous sentence upon bookssupported by such objections, which, if they were rightly taken (andthat they are not always), do by no means go to the merit of thewhole. In the theatre especially, a single expression which doth notcoincide with the taste of the audience, or with any individual criticof that audience, is sure to be hissed; and one scene which should bedisapproved would hazard the whole piece. To write within such severerules as these is as impossible as to live up to some spleneticopinions: and if we judge according to the sentiments of some critics,and of some Christians, no author will be saved in this world, and noman in the next.Chapter ii.