The poet must be alike polished by an intercourse with the world as with the studies of taste; one to whom labour is negligence, refinement a science, and art a nature.

It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us.

Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised.

To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius-the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.

There is an art of reading, an art of thinking, and an art of writing.

The defects of great men are the consolation of the dunces.

The art of quotation requires more delicacy in the practice than those conceive who can see nothing more in a quotation than an extract. Whenever the mind of a writer is saturated with the full inspiration of a great author, a quotation gives completeness to the whole; it seals his feelings with undisputed authority.