Should they ever possess the power to encourage merit, they must also possess the power to depress it.

Which power will be more frequently exercised, let every one who has studied literary history, let every one who has studied human nature, declare.
Envy and faction insinuate themselves into all communities.

They often disturb the peace, and pervert the decisions, of benevolent and scientific associations.

But it is in literary academies that they exert the most extensive and pernicious influence.

In the first place, the principles of literary criticism, though equally fixed with those on which the chemist and the surgeon proceed, are by no means equally recognised.