wherewith this ancient sect hath honoured the world, shall
immediately find from the whole thread and tenor of them that the
ideas of the authors have been altogether conversant and taken up
with the faults, and blemishes, and oversights, and mistakes of
other writers, and let the subject treated on be whatever it will,
their imaginations are so entirely possessed and replete with the
defects of other pens, that the very quintessence of what is bad
does of necessity distil into their own, by which means the whole
appears to be nothing else but an abstract of the criticisms
themselves have made.

Having thus briefly considered the original and office of a critic,
as the word is understood in its most noble and universal
acceptation, I proceed to refute the objections of those who argue
from the silence and pretermission of authors, by which they pretend
to prove that the very art of criticism, as now exercised, and by me
explained, is wholly modern, and consequently that the critics of
Great Britain and France have no title to an original so ancient and
illustrious as I have deduced. Now, if I can clearly make out, on
the contrary, that the most ancient writers have particularly
described both the person and the office of a true critic agreeable
to the definition laid down by me, their grand objection--from the
silence of authors--will fall to the ground.

I confess to have for a long time borne a part in this general
error, from which I should never have acquitted myself but through
the assistance of our noble moderns, whose most edifying volumes I
turn indefatigably over night and day, for the improvement of my
mind and the good of my country. These have with unwearied pains
made many useful searches into the weak sides of the ancients, and