[Footnote 1: Among the works that I have seen which specifically develop this argument are: Thomas Blackwell, _An Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer_ (1735); Richard Hurd, _The Third [Elizabethan] Dialogue_ (1759) and _Letters on Chivalry and Romance_ (1762); John Ogilvie, "An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients," in _Poems on Several Subjects_ (1762); John Brown, _A Dissertation of the Rise, Union, and Power, the Progressions, Separations, and Corruptions of Poetry and Music_ (1763) and a shorter version of the _Dissertation, The History of the Rise and Progress of Poetry_ (1764); Hugh Blair, _A Critical Dissertation on the Poems_ of Ossian (1763); William Duff, _An Essay on Original Genius_ (1767); Robert Wood, _An Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer_ (1767, enlarged version 1769); Thomas Pownall, _A Treatise on the Study of Antiquities_ (1782). Such a list, however, if it were to indicate the scope and ramifications of the argument would have to be expanded to include more general eighteenth-century studies of the evolution of cultural forms; for the argument on the nature of art and its relation to "primitive" societies is part of a larger one centering on the whole idea of progress. Treatment of the whole subject has never been fully integrated into a study of the nature (or natures) of eighteenth-century criticism and critical theory--although a start has been made on study of it in and of itself. The basic treatment remains Lois Whitney's _Primitivism and the Idea of Progress_ (Baltimore, 1934) and her two essays "English Primitivistic Theories of Epic Origins," _MP_, XXI (1924), 337-378 and "Thomas Blackwell, a Disciple of Shaftesbury," _PQ_, _V_ (1926), 196-211. These are to be considerably qualified in their general, sociological orientation by Gladys Bryson's _Man and Society: The Scottish Inquiry of the Eighteenth Century_ (Princeton, 1945). They are further to be qualified in their literary-critical orientation by my "The Eighteenth-Century Scottish Primitivists: Some Reconsiderations," _ELH_, XII (1945), 203-220, which is in turn somewhat expanded upon and generalized in the appendix to Ernest Tuveson's _Millenium and Utopia: A Study in the Background of the Idea of Progress_ (Berkeley, 1949).] [Footnote 2: See, for example, Donald Foerster, "Scottish Primitivism and the Historical Approach," _PQ_, XXIX (1950), 307-323.] [Footnote 3: The essay was republished in 1804 as part of Scott's _Dissertations, Essays, and Parallels_. These pieces range from college premium compositions of the 1770's to the "Dissertation" of 1800.] [Footnote 4: The essay is handily available in W. J. Bate's anthology, _Criticism: The Major Texts_ (New York, 1952), pp. 292-295.] DISSERTATIONS, Essays, AND PARALLELS.