ELEMENTS

OF

CRITICISM.

VOLUME I.

The THIRD EDITION.

With ADDITIONS and IMPROVEMENTS,

EDINBURGH:

Printed for A. MILLAR, London;

AND

A. KINCAID & J. BELL, Edinburgh.

MDCCLX V.

TO THE

KIN

G.

SIR,

T

HE fine arts have ever been encouraged by wife princes, not singly for private amusement, but for their beneficial influence in society. By uniting different ranks in the same elegant pleasures, they promote benevolence: by cherishing love of order, they inforce submission to government: and by inspiring delicacy of feeling, they make regular government a double bleffing.

THESE confiderations embolden me to hope for your Majesty's patronage in behalf of the following work, which treats of the fine arts, and attempts to form a standard of taste, by unfolding those principles that ought to govern the taste of every individual.

It is rare to find one born with fuch delicacy of feeling, as not to need inftruction: it is equally rare to find one so low in feeling, as not to be capable of inftruction. And yet, to refine our taste with respect to beauties of art or of nature, is fcarce endeavoured in any seminary of learning; a lamentable defect, confidering how early in life tafte is fufceptible of culture, and how difficult to reform it if unhappily perverted. To furnish materials for fupplying that defect, was an additional motive for the prefent undertaking.

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