ague, is applied indifferently to the noble
prayer of Ajax in the Iliad, and to a passage of Plato about the human
body, as full of conceits as an ode of Cowley. Having no fixed standard,
Longinus is right only by accident. He is rather a fancier than a
critic.

Modern writers have been prevented by many causes from supplying the
deficiencies of their classical predecessors. At the time of the revival
of literature, no man could, without great and painful labour, acquire
an accurate and elegant knowledge of the ancient languages. And,
unfortunately, those grammatical and philological studies, without which
it was impossible to understand the great works of Athenian and Roman
genius, have a tendency to contract the views and deaden the sensibility
of those who follow them with extreme assiduity. A powerful mind, which
has been long employed in such studies, may be compared to the gigantic
spirit in the Arabian tale, who was persuaded to contract himself to
small dimensions in order to enter within the enchanted vessel, and,
when his prison had been closed upon him, found himself unable to escape
from the narrow boundaries to the measure of which he had reduced his
stature. When the means have long been the objects of application, they
are naturally substituted for the end. It was said, by Eugene of Savoy,
that the greatest generals have commonly been those who have been at
once raised to command, and introduced to the great operations of war,
without being employed in the petty calculations and manoeuvres which
employ the time of an inferior officer. In literature the principle is
equally sound. The great tactics of criticism will, in general, be best
understood by those who have not had much practice in drilling syllables
and particles.

I remember to have observed among the French Anas a ludicrous instance
of this. A scholar, doubtless of great learning, recommends the study
of some long Latin treatise, of which I now forget the name, on the
religion, manners, government, and language of the early Greeks. "For
there," says he, "you will learn everything of importance that is
contained in the Iliad and Odyssey, without the trouble of reading two
such tedious books." Alas! it had not occurred to the poor gentleman
that all the knowledge to which he attached so much value was useful
only as it illustrated the great poems which he despised, and would be
as worthless for any other purpose as the mythology of Caffraria, or