In the first place, I must take leave to tell them, that they wholly mistake the nature of criticism, who think its business is principally to find fault.  Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant a standard of judging well; the chiefest part of which is, to observe those excellencies which should delight a reasonable reader.  If the design, the conduct, the thoughts, and the expressions of a poem, be generally such as proceed from a true genius of poetry, the critic ought to pass his judgement in favour of the author.  It is malicious and unmanly to snarl at the little lapses of a pen, from which Virgil himself stands not exempted.  Horace acknowledges, that honest Homer nods sometimes:  He is not equally awake in every line; but he leaves it also as a standing measure for our judgments,

  —­Non, ubi plura nitent in carmine, paucis
  Offendi maculis, quas aut incuria fudit,
  Aut humana parum cavit natura.—­

And Longinus, who was undoubtedly, after Aristotle the greatest critic amongst the Greeks, in his twenty-seventh chapter, [Greek:  PERI HUPSOUS], has judiciously preferred the sublime genius that sometimes errs, to the middling or indifferent one, which makes few faults, but seldom or never rises to any excellence.  He compares the first to a man of large possessions, who has not leisure to consider of every slight expence, will not debase himself to the management of every trifle:  Particular sums are not laid out, or spared, to the greatest advantage in his economy; but are sometimes suffered to run to waste, while he is only careful of the main.  On the other side, he likens the mediocrity of wit, to one of a mean fortune, who manages his store with extreme frugality, or rather parsimony; but who, with fear of running into profuseness, never arrives to the magnificence of living.  This kind of genius writes indeed correctly.  A wary man he is in grammar, very nice as to solecism or barbarism, judges to a hair of little decencies, knows better than any man what is not to be written, and never hazards himself so far as to fall, but plods on deliberately, and, as a grave man ought, is sure to put his staff before him.  In short, he sets his heart upon it, and with wonderful care makes his business sure; that is, in plain English, neither to be blamed nor praised.—­I could, says my author, find out some blemishes in Homer; and am perhaps as naturally inclined to be disgusted at a fault as another man; but, after all, to speak impartially, his failings are such, as are only marks of human frailty:  they are little mistakes, or rather negligences, which have escaped his pen in the fervour of his writing; the sublimity of his spirit carries it with me against his carelessness; and though Apollonius his “Argonauts,” and Theocritus his “Idyllia,” are more free from errors, there is not any man of so false a judgment, who would chuse rather to have been Apollonius or Theocritus, than Homer.