Fashion is a great restraint upon your persons of taste and fancy; who would otherwise in the most trifling instances be able to distinguish themselves from the vulgar.

Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.

Flattery of the verbal kind is gross. In short, applause is of too coarse a nature to be swallowed in the gross, though the extract or tincture be ever so agreeable.

Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief. while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.

Fools are very often united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together.

Harmony of period and melody of style have greater weight than is generally imagined in the judgment we pass upon writing and writers. As a proof of this, let us reflect what texts of scripture, what lines in poetry, or what periods we most remember and quote, either in verse or prose, and we shall find them to be only musical ones.

Whoe'er excels in what we prize, appears a hero in our eyes.