《道德情操论·卷三·论评判自己情感与行为的基础·二·论对赞扬的爱与对值得赞扬的爱》第12节
The beauty of poetry is a matter of such nicety, that a young beginner can scarce ever be certain that he has attained it. Nothing delights him so much, therefore, as the favourable judgments of his friends and of the public; and nothing mortifies him so severely as the contrary. The one establishes, the other shakes, the good opinion which he is anxious to entertain concerning his own performances. Experience and success may in time give him a little more confidence in his own judgment. He is at all times, however, liable to be most severely mortified by the unfavourable judgments of the public. Racine was so disgusted by the indifferent success of his Phædra, the finest tragedy, perhaps, that is extant in any language, that, though in the vigour of his life, and at the height of his abilities, he resolved to write no more for the stage. That great poet used frequently to tell his son, that the most paltry and impertinent criticism had always given him more pain than the highest and justest eulogy had ever given him pleasure. The extreme sensibility of Voltaire to the slightest censure of the same kind is well known to every body. The Dunciad of Mr. Pope is an everlasting monument of how much the most correct, as well as the most elegant and harmonious of all the English poets, had been hurt by the criticisms of the lowest and most contemptible authors. Gray (who joins to the sublimity of Milton the elegance and harmony of Pope, and to whom nothing is wanting to render him, perhaps, the first poet in the English language, but to have written a little more) is said to have been so much hurt by a foolish and impertinent parody of two of his finest odes, that he never afterwards attempted any considerable work. Those men of letters who value themselves upon what is called fine writing in prose, approach somewhat to the sensibility of poets.
注释摘要
斯密在这一段里继续推进他关于赞扬与值得赞扬之分的论证，但他的切入角度不再是概念辨析，而是人类心理中一个特殊的不对称：为什么对不实赞扬，稍有理智的人都能一笑置之，可不实的指责却常常让最清醒的人也痛苦不堪。他的解释落在「确定性」上，而诗人恰好是这条原理最触目的例证。 诗歌之美，标准极微妙。一个初学写诗的人，几乎没办法确知自己是否真的达到了某种境界。斯密指出，这…