Our Judgment Ripens; Our Imagination Decays. We

A Grecian History, Perfectly Written Should Be A Complete Record Of The Rise And Progress Of Poetry, Philosophy, And The Arts.

Generalization Is Necessary To The Advancement Of Knowledge; But Particularly Is Indispensable To The Creations Of The Imagination. In Proportion As Men Know More And Think More They Look Less At Individuals And More At Classes. They Therefore Make Better Theories And Worse Poems.

Our Estimate Of A Character Always Depends Much On The Manner In Which That Character Affects Our Own Interests And Passions.

Those Who Seem To Load The Public Taste Are, In General, Merely Outrunning It In The Direction Which It Is Spontaneously Pursuing.

A Perfect Historian Must Possess An Imagination Sufficiently Powerful To Make His Narrative Affecting And Picturesque; Yet He Must Control It So Absolutely As To Content Himself With The Materials Which He Finds, And To Refrain From Supplying Deficiencies By Additions Of His Own. He Must Be A Profound And Ingenious Reasoner; Yet He Must Possess Sufficient Self-command To Abstain From Casting His Facts In The Mould Of His Hypothesis.