r and the means of judging rightly
of all other works of intellect, those of abstract science alone excepted.

It is a painful truth, that not only individuals, but even whole nations,
are ofttimes so enslaved to the habits of their education and immediate
circumstances, as not to judge disinterestedly even on those subjects, the
very pleasure arising from which consists in its disinterestedness,
namely, on subjects of taste and polite literature. Instead of deciding
concerning their own modes and customs by any rule of reason, nothing
appears rational, becoming, or beautiful to them, but what coincides with
the peculiarities of their education. In this narrow circle, individuals
may attain to exquisite discrimination, as the French critics have done in
their own literature; but a true critic can no more be such without
placing himself on some central point, from which he may command the
whole,--that is, some general rule, which, founded in reason, or the
faculties common to all men, must therefore apply to each,--than an
astronomer can explain the movements of the solar system without taking
his stand in the sun. And let me remark, that this will not tend to
produce despotism, but, on the contrary, true tolerance, in the critic. He
will, indeed, require, as the spirit and substance of a work, something
true in human nature itself, and independent of all circumstances; but in
the mode of applying it, he will estimate genius and judgment according to
the felicity with which the imperishable soul of intellect shall have
adapted itself to the age, the place, and the existing manners. The error
he will expose, lies in reversing this, and holding up the mere
circumstances as perpetual to the utter neglect of the power which can
alone animate them. For art cannot exist without, or apart from nature;
and what has man of his own to give to his fellow man, but his own
thoughts and feelings, and his observations, so far as they are modified
by his own thoughts or feelings?

Let me, then, once more submit this question to minds emancipated alike
from national, or party, or sectarian prejudice:--Are the plays of
Shakespeare works of rude uncultivated genius, in which the splendour of
the parts compensates, if aught can compensate, for the barbarous
shapelessness and irregularity of the whole?--Or is the form equally
admirable with the matter, and the judgment of the great poet not less
deserving our wonder than his genius?--Or, aga