To require that a critic should conceive classes of composition which had never existed, and then investigate their principles, would be as unreasonable as the demand of Nebuchadnezzar, who expected his magicians first to tell him his dream and then to interpret it.
With all his deficiencies, Aristotle was the most enlightened and profound critic of antiquity.

Dionysius was far from possessing the same exquisite subtilty, or the same vast comprehension.

But he had access to a much greater number of specimens; and he had devoted himself, as it appears, more exclusively to the study of elegant literature.

His peculiar judgments are of more value than his general principles.

He is only the historian of literature.