Page:An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe.djvu/89

 coming universal. There are proportionably a greater number of learned men without any natural genius in every country, when the love of science is diffused among all ranks of people, than in its incipient state, when this passion influences only the ambitious; but it is ten to one, that every man of learning without genius becomes a critic, therefore critics must be proportionably more numerous when learning is diffus'd through all the degrees of mankind.

critics, therefore, or all such as judge by rule, and not by feelings, must necessarily become more numerous in the maturity of learning, than in its beginning; and if they have been always found by experience to injure it; I may be permitted to call criticism, the natural decay of politeness. A decay which may be deplored, but cannot be prevent-