I do not attack the founders of the association. Their
characters are respectable; their motives, I am willing to
believe, were laudable. But I feel, and it is the duty of every
literary man to feel, a strong jealousy of their proceedings.
Their society can be innocent only while it continues to be
despicable. Should they ever possess the power to encourage
merit, they must also possess the power to depress it. Which
power will be more frequently exercised, let every one who has
studied literary history, let every one who has studied human
nature, declare.

Envy and faction insinuate themselves into all communities. They
often disturb the peace, and pervert the decisions, of benevolent
and scientific associations. But it is in literary academies
that they exert the most extensive and pernicious influence. In
the first place, the principles of literary criticism, though
equally fixed with those on which the chemist and the surgeon
proceed, are by no means equally recognised. Men are rarely able
to assign a reason for their approbation or dislike on questions
of taste; and therefore they willingly submit to any guide who
boldly asserts his claim to superior discernment. It is more
difficult to ascertain and establish the merits of a poem than
the powers of a machine or the benefits of a new remedy. Hence
it is in literature, that quackery is most easily puffed, and
excellence most easily decried.

In some degree this argument applies to academies of the fine
arts; and it is fully confirmed by all that I have ever heard of
that institution which annually disfigures the walls of Somerset