Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Master-Spirits
Among the many vague forms which modern ingenuity has tried to manipulate into a Science must be classed what is usually called Criticism but, for my own part, I am inclined to think that Criticism means to belong to the Fine Arts, and to elude the scientific arrangement altogether.
There was a time, of course, when books, pictures, and music were judged by a certain set of fixed rules, each incontestable as the law of gravitation; when contemporary persons could appraise the value of an aesthetic article as easily as a grocer finds out the weight of a pound of sugar; when, in fact, critics knew their business thoroughly, being in the secret of the manu facture. Sometimes the critical Scales were entrusted to one man, say to Voltaire, or John Dryden, or Addison.
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