Two Apologies and Dialogue with Trypho

as something pernicious and destructive to good morals, as it makes men trifling, importunate, hostile, fierce, petulant, insulting, arrogant, contemptuous of others, admirers of themselves, and finally turns them from fools into the insane and the furious.

Indeed, I do not doubt that to truly learned and perspicacious men (who know the use and abuse of letters, and how far useful knowledge may progress in any study, and where eruditæ nugæ learned trifles begin) it is a sufficiently ridiculous spectacle to see a pair of leading critics squabbling with deadly hatred over words, syllables, letters, and punctuation, as if for hearth and home, and despising each other and the whole human race, relying on the consciousness of their recondite erudition. I trust, however, that true criticism faces no danger from judges of this kind. Were I not thoroughly persuaded of this, I would have chosen anyone else to plead its cause before than you, whom I—even when you were very young (for I shall speak, not fearing the suspicion of flattery)—always observed with great admiration, in all matters, to distinguish and prune the hollow from the solid with precision, and at a single glance. We, however, as we are a somewhat more confident nation, neither flee from you as a judge, nor indeed from any others, unless they be ignorant. For those will at last be able to judge rightly and skillfully concerning the value of any art, not those who have perceived everything commonly taught in every kind of literature, and cannot proceed or look beyond that themselves, much less those who are stuck in one single discipline, and blinded by their love for it, can neither see what to criticize in it nor what to praise in others, and because of the deference with which they hold themselves, easily persuade themselves that whatever they do not know is trivial and nugatory; but those who, having surveyed all parts of learning, and having grasped the connection of all things with one another, can perceive what utility or ornament each possesses in itself or contributes to the whole structure; who, if they are neither painters, nor sculptors, nor gilders, nor craftsmen, are nonetheless architects; if they could not, or, occupied in greater matters more worthy of their care, would not, be mere grammarians, poets, geometers, or astrologers, they are nonetheless by a certain natural right the judges and censors of all these things, fashioned and designated for that purpose by nature herself. We are so far from fearing to plead our cause before the counsel of such men, with you exercising judgment, that we even willingly desire and yearn for it. We confess, indeed, that our criticism does not always bear true fruit, but sometimes goes too much into foliage. Therefore, you masters of the field, curb the luxurious growth; you, by your right, restrain with a salutary pruning-hook that which is creeping and becoming overgrown with wild shoots; but let the wicked axe be absent, and the impure hands of ignorant men, by whom nothing is here struck or measured.

But is it not a fruitful matter? It contributes nothing to the convenience of life or the public good. Naturally,