Page:The Cottagers of Glenburnie - Hamilton (1808).djvu/9

 critic's office. It is under this misconception that persons of highly cultivated talents sometimes condescend to make use of the contemptuous sneer, the petty cavil, the burlesque representation,—though modes of criticism in which they may easily be outdone by the vulgar and illiterate. But surely when men of genius and learning seem thus to admit, that the decisions they pronounce stand in need of other support than the justice and good sense in which they are founded, they forget the consequences that may follow. They forget, that the tone of ill nature can never be in unison with the emotions that arise from the admiration of what is beautiful; and that as far as they, by the influence of their example, contribute to give this tone to the public mind, they corrupt the public taste, and give a bias that is inimical to its progress in refinement. But however the prevalence of this style of animadversion may, in a general view, be lamented, it is not by authors of such trifling productions as the present, that it ought to be condemned: for, is it not some consolation to reflect, that let the meanest performance be judged with what asperity, or spoken of with what contempt it may, it cannot be more severely judged, or more contemptuously