It is, however, with much doubt and diffidence that I submit this attempt to the public; being at least sensible of the danger and difficulty of it, which the British Critic appears to * This line, which a synod of North-British Critics have peremptorily pronounced to be nonsense, is taken from the tenth Nemean of Pindar, v. 141 ; and until they passed sentence upon it in No. xiv. of the Edinburgh Review, was universally thought to express, with peculiar force and delicacy, the mixture of indignation and tenderness so appropriate to the grief of the hero of the modern as well as of the ancient ode. The second line, ὁ μελαγκλαινος ανηρ, they are pleased to say can only mean a parson; so that the μελαγκλαίνοι Πρίηποι at Bion's funeral must be the vicar and curate, or perhaps the dean and chapter officiating on the occasion, as a reverend gentleman appears officiating in the funeral scene of Hogarth's "Harlot's Progress." That such critics should know any thing of the distinct use of the articles in Homeric, Pindaric, and Attic composition, it would be absurd to expect. have been as incapable of perceiving as of surmounting but now as heretofore-" qui stultis videri eruditi volunt, stulti eruditis videntur." Who this illustrious member of a society of the first critics and scholars of the age is, I am not anxious to inquire; it being sufficient to know what he is. He may, nevertheless, hold a high station in the critical synod; since all pre-eminence is comparative; and compared with the translator, who makes Herodotus assert, that the Indians have a vertical sun at the hour of the morning when the Greeks withdrew from the forum, he is certainly deserving of a very high one. With this notable translation, indeed, I am no otherwise acquainted than through Major Rennel's quotations; who, being avowedly no scholar, consulted, it seems, the translator, whenever he had any doubts concerning the meaning or accuracy of the translation. Possessing, however, a competent share of that, in which this translator seems to be as deficient as in the language, which he pretends to translate, he is very much perplexed at finding an ancient historian, who had no other means of ascertaining the middle of the day but the sun's being in its meridian altitude, assert that it was vertical at a previous hour in the morning; and that too in direct contradiction to an opi CHAP. II. Of Imagina tion. nion, which he, in common with the rest of his countrymen and contemporaries, held, of the regions of the earth, where the mid-day sun is vertical, being uninhabitable through heat. (Geography of Herodotus, p. 8.) Had the Major, however, consulted a schoolboy instead of this oracular critic, he might have learnt that there is no mention of a vertical sun in the original; the historian having merely observed that the greatest heat of the sun was at a certain hour of the morning, when the business of the forum ceased, and not in the middle of the day, as in other countries, θερμοτατος δε εστι ὁ ἥλιος τέτοισι τοισι ανθρώποισε το ἑώθινον 8 καταπερ τοισι άλλοισι μεσαμβρίης, αλλ' ὑπερτείλας μέχρις & αγόρης διαλύσιος. Lib. iii. 104. Thus rendered in the quotation-" In distinction from all other nations, the heat with these people (the Indians) is greatest, not at mid-day, but in the morning. They have a vertical sun, when with us people withdraw from the forum." This error, as well as others of the kind, with which most of the quotations abound, could not have arisen from misunderstanding the Greek; but from misunderstanding the French. A typographical inaccuracy perhaps, or even an accidental erasure in a particular copy of M. Larcher's version may have turned plus chaud into plus haud; of which an ob vious emendation would make plus haut; and CHAP. II. tion. le soleil le plus haut, in India, the English Of Imaginatranslator might naturally think could only mean a vertical sun. If, however, he choose to derive his errors from any other source, he is welcome to the benefit of it: for of M. Larcher and his version I know nothing, ex-. cept that I have heard him spoken of by competent judges on the continent, as a man of sound understanding if not of profound learning; and one who was therefore not likely to transmute the clear plain sense of the clearest and plainest of all writers into utter nonsense * *. A synod of such critics, as these translators into, and out of a language so little known to them, gravely sitting in judgment and deliberately passing sentence upon the works of persons of real talents and learning, is in itself only ridiculous; but their decisions being listened to and received by the public is a melancholy symptom of the decline of taste and literature. *The error may have originally sprung from a mistake in Stephens's Thesaurus, v. ¿πρтλλw; and been successively copied and augmented by the Latin, French, and English translators; though the real meaning of the word is as clear and obvious, as the plain sense of the context, the simplest etymology, and the authority of the best writers can make it. See Euripid. Phoniss. y. 1021. Ed. Porson. &c. A dictionary is the remembrancer of a scholar, and the oracle of a dunce. CHAP. Of Judg ment. CHAPTER III. OF JUDGMENT. 1. JUDGMENT is more properly the result of a faculty than a faculty itself; it being the decision, which reason draws from comparison: whence the word is commonly used to signify the talent of deciding justly and accurately in matters, that do not admit of mathematical demonstration; in which sense, judgment may be properly considered as a mode of action of reason. It is the opposite of wit, as Locke, and after him, the author of the Inquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful have justly observed; wit being chiefly employed in discovering resemblances, and judgment in detecting differences. 2. Reason, in the strict sense of the word, has little or nothing to do with taste; for taste depends upon feeling and sentiment, and not upon demonstration or argument. The word beauty is, indeed, often applied to a syllogism or a problem; but then it means clearness, point, or precision; or whatever else be the characteristic excellence of that, to which it is applied. So far as reason is employed upon relations of number and quan |