Page:An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe.djvu/108

 here are two opposite qualities required in the writer, in one of which his imagination, in the other his reasoning faculty is every moment liable to offend; what has he in this case to guide him? Taste is, perhaps, his only director. Taste in writing, is the exhibition of the greatest quantity of beauty and of use, that may be admitted into any description without counteracting each other.

perfection of taste therefore proceeds from a knowledge of what is beautiful and useful. Criticism professes to encrease our taste. But our taste cannot be encreased with regard to beauty, because, as has been shewn, our perceptions of this kind cannot be encreased, but are most vivid in infancy. Criticism then can only improve our taste in the useful. But this,