Page:An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe.djvu/213

 in morals. We have often no permanent characteristics by which to compare the virtues or the vices of our ancestors with our own; a generation may rise and pass away, without leaving any traces of what it really was, and all complaints of our deterioration, may be only topics of declamation, or the cavillings of disappointment: but in taste, we have standing evidence, we can, with precision, compare the literary performances of our fathers with our own, and from their excellence, or defects, determine the moral, as well as the literary merits of either.

then, there ever comes a time, when taste is so far depraved among us, that critics shall load every work of genius with unnecessary comment, and quarter their empty performances, with the substantial merit of an author, both for sub-