It is, therefore, somewhat singular that their productions should so rarely have been examined on just and philosophical principles of criticism.
The ancient writers themselves afford us but little assistance.
When they particularise, they are commonly trivial: when they would generalise, they become indistinct.

An exception must, indeed, be made in favour of Aristotle.

Both in analysis and in combination, that great man was without a rival.

No philosopher has ever possessed, in an equal degree, the talent either of separating established systems into their primary elements, or of connecting detached phenomena in harmonious systems.

He was the great fashioner of the intellectual chaos; he changed its darkness into light, and its discord into order.