have been so little done towards the improvement of the art itself, by investigating its laws, or unfolding its principles. Unless a very short essay, published by M. D'Alembert, in his Mélanges de Litterature, &c. as introductory to his translations of some pieces of Tacitus, and a few reflections of the Abbé Batteux, in his Principes de la Litterature, I know of nothing that has been written upon the subject. The observations of M. D'Alembert, though extremely judicious, are too general to be considered as rules or even principles of the art; and the precepts of the Abbé Batteux are chiefly of a grammatical nature, and seem to have for their sole object the ascertainment of the analogy that one language bears to another, or the pointing out of those circumstances ofconstruction
