CRITICISM. has been defined "the art of judging with propriety concerning stny object, or combination of objects." In a somewhat more limited, but still ex tensive meaning. its province is con.finod to literature, philology, and the fine arts; and to subjects of antiquarian, scientific, or historical investigation. In this sense, every branch of literary study, as well as each of the fine arts, has its proper criti cism as an appendage to it The elements of criticism depend on the two principles of beauty and truth, one of which is the final end or object of study in every one of its pursuits: beauty, in letters and the arts; truth, in history and the sciences. The office of criticism, therefore, is, first to lay down those forms or essential bless which answer to our conception of the beautiful or the true in each branch of study ; and, next, to point out by ref erence to those ideas the excellences or detects of individual works, as they ap proach or diverge from the requisite standard in each particular. Thus, his torical criticism teaches us to distinguish the true frOni the false, or the probable from the improbable, in historical works ; scientific criticism has the same object in each respective line of science ; while lit erary criticism, in a general sense, has for its principal employment the investi gation of the merits and demerits of style or diction, according to the received stand ard of excellence in every language ; in poetry and the arts, criticism develops the principles of that more refined and exquisite sense of beauty which forms the ideal model of perfection in each. is the critical faculty ; that perception of the beautiful in literature and the arts, fur the acquisition of which, perhaps, some minds have superior natural powers than others, but which can in no instance be fully developed except by education and habit. Among the classical ancients, the criticism of beauty was carried to high degree of perfection. Less encum bered with a multitude of facts and things to be known than ourselves, their minds were more at leisure, and more sedulous ly exercised in reflecting on their own no tions and perceptions; hence the aston ishing progress which they made in the fine arts; and hence, in literature, they valued more the beauty of the vehicle in which sentiments were conveyed, and the moral or poetical beauty of those senti ments themselves, than the objective branches of it is the princi pal purpose of literature. in our days, to
convey easily and precisely to the mind. And as the criticism which antiquity has left us consists almost wholly of such relates to the literature and the arts (in history they had, ns far as we know, few n•tical spirits, in the sciences almost none,) the name is still c nfinell, in its most popular signification, 10 those prov inces of research. The criticism of truth is of later growth ; but as it is regulated for the most part by similar rules and principles, and as minds which possess the faculty of judgment in a high degree in the one are generally capable, if exer eised, of forming right apprehensions in the other, they may be considered as nearly allied in the utore essential re spects. For although it is true that in scientific investigation great knowledge of the individual subject is required to constitute a critic, and in the fine arts the most gifted mind will require much edu cation and practice to judge of beauty ; yet it is equally true in both of these br.anehes of study, however widely differ ing from each other, that knowledge alone (except perhaps in purely abstract sci ence, in respect of which the name of crit icism scents hardly applicable) will not make the critic, and that the habit of dis criminating and .judging correctly is a distinct faculty or compound of faculties in the mind.—Criticisin, in a 11101C limited sense, is a branch of belles lettres. Es says written for the purpose of eommend ing or diseommending works in literature or the arts, and pointing out their vari ous merits and defects, are works in the critical department. Thus the term "pe riodical criticism" is used to express the body of writing contained in the various works under the name of magazines, re views, &e., which are periodically pu• lished in most literary countries.