I will instance, in our own language, the Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson Crusoe.

Of all the prose works of fiction which we possess, these are, I will not say the best, but the most peculiar, the most unprecedented, the most inimitable.

Had Bunyan and Defoe been educated gentlemen, they would probably have published translations and imitations of French romances "by a person of quality." I am not sure that we should have had Lear if Shakspeare had been able to read Sophocles.
But these circumstances, while they foster genius, are unfavourable to the science of criticism.

Men judge by comparison.

They are unable to estimate the grandeur of an object when there is no standard by which they can measure it.