The laws of writing were no longer founded on the practice of the author, but on the dictates of the critic...and thus many rules for good writing have been established, which have not the least foundation in truth or nature; and which commonly serve for no other purpose than to curb and restrain genius, in the same manner as it would have restrained the dancing-master, had the many excellent treatises on that art laid down as an essential rule that every man must dance in chains.
—Henry Fielding, English novelist and dramatist, Tom Jones, 1749

Posted on November 8, 1999 at 3:42 PM

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