2040. THAT CRITICS KNOW NOTHING IN COMPARISON WITH OTHERS WHO ARE NOT CRITICS. It has often been shown me that critics, or those most skilled in languages, as the Hebrew, for instance, yea, even those who have constructed lexicons, and been translators of Moses and the prophets, were much less intelligent than those who were not critics; for the weighing of words has the effect of distracting the mind by the various senses assigned, causing it to adhere in bare words; and when such critics have seized upon any particular signification of a word, they hold on to it wholly regardless of the genuine sense, which they impel hither and thither, and urge with violence, in order to make it coincide [with their views]; which, when once the signification of a word is assumed, they are enabled to do in a thousand ways. All this was shown me by a living experience. - 1748, May 22.