Two Apologies and Dialogue with Trypho

But let us pass over these higher matters, which are at this time understood or cared for by few, and let us describe the faculty of our critic, not by the almost immense boundaries of that art, but, as is now commonly done, by one of the limits of its provinces; who would not marvel that this art, whose function and duty is to correct the writings of the ancients, which have been incredibly corrupted by the various injuries of a long period of time, and to restore them to their original luster, should appear to learned men, and especially to those who profess themselves the greatest admirers of these authors, a certain futile, inept, and utterly useless thing? It must be that they think either that no errors remain in those books, or at least none that can be removed: both of which are far otherwise, as all daily feel who are not entirely devoid of critical acuteness, and which they themselves would perhaps have seen if they had not learned to ridicule criticism before knowing it, and to admire these writers before understanding them. Let them just examine the writings of even the lowest class of critics. They will understand how great a supply of errors has lain hidden from them, and how they are not incurable, when they see that they sometimes hit upon the best and most certain emendations, not a few being so futile and devoid of judgment that they seem to act by chance rather than by reason and counsel, many not indeed endowed with absolutely no judgment, but, which