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INTRODUCTION.

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ON TASTE.

Na fuperficial view, we may seem to differ very widely from each other in our reasonings, and no less in our pleasures: but notwithstanding this difference, which I think to be rather apparent than real, it is probable that the standard both of reason and taste is the fame in all human creatures. For if there were not fome principles of judgment as well as of sentiment common to all mankind, no hold could poffibly be taken either on their reason or their passions, sufficient to maintain the ordinary correfpondence of life. It appears indeed to be generally acknowledged, that with regard to truth and falsehood there is fomething fixed. We find people in their disputes continually appealing to certain tests and standards, which are allowed on all fides, and are fuppofed to be established in our common nature. But there is not the fame obvious concurrence in any uniform or settled principles which relate to taste. taste. It is even commonly supposed that this delicate and aërial faculty, which seems too 'volatile to endure even the chains of a definition, cannot be properly tried by any test, nor regulated by any standard.There is so continual a call for the exercise of the reasoning faculty, and it is so much strengthened by perpetual contention, that certain maxims of right reason seem to be tacitly settled amongst the most ignorant. The learned have improved on this rude science, and reduced those maxims into a system. If taste has not been so happily cultivated, it was not that the fubject was barren, but that the labourers were few or negligent; for to say the truth, there are not the same interesting motives to impel us to fix the one, which urge us to afcertain the other. And after all, if men differ in their opinion concerning fuch matters, their difference is not attended with the same important consequences; else I make no doubt but that the logick of taste, if I may be allowed the expreffion, might very possibly be as well digefted, and we might come to discuss matters of this nature with as much certainty, as those which feem more immediately within the province of mere reafon. And indeed, it is very neceffary, at the entrance into fuch an inquiry as our prefent, to make this point as clear as possible; for if tafte has no fixed principles, if the imagination is not affected according to fome invariable and certain certain laws, our labour is like to be employed to very little purpose; as it must be judged an useless, if not an absurd undertaking, to lay down rules for caprice, and to fet up for a legiflator of whims and fancies.

The term tafte, like all other figurative terms, is not extremely accurate; the thing which we understand by it, is far from a fimple and determinate idea in the minds of most men, and it is therefore liable to uncertainty and confufion. I have no great opinion of a definition, the celebrated remedy for the cure of this disorder. For when we define, we feem in danger of circumscribing nature within the bounds of our own notions, which we often take up by hazard, or embrace on trust, or form out of a limited and partial confideration of the object before us, instead of extending our ideas to take in all that nature comprehends, according to her manner of combining, We are limited in our inquiry by the strict laws to which we have fubmited at our setting out.

-- Circa vilem patulumque morabimur orbem, Unde pudor proferre pedem vetat aut operis lex.

A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined; but let the virtue of a definition be what it will, in the order of things, VOL. I.

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it feems rather to follow than to precede our inquiry, of which it ought to be confidered as the result. It must be acknowledged that the methods of disquifition and teaching may be fometimes dif ferent, and on very good reason undoubtedly; but for my part, I am convinced that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation, is incomparably the beft; fince, not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew; it tends to set the reader himself in the track of invention, and to direct him into those paths in which the author has made his own discoveries, if he should be fo happy as to have made any that are valuable.

But to cut off all pretence for cavilling, I mean by the word Taste no more than that faculty or those faculties of the mind, which are affected with, or which form a judgment of, the works of imagination and the elegant arts. This is, I think, the most general idea of that word, and what is the least connected with any particular theory. And my point in this inquiry is, to find whether there are any principles, on which the imagination is affected, so common to all, fo grounded and certain, as to fupply the means of reasoning fatisfactorily about them. And fuch principles of taste I fancy there are; however paradoxical it may feem to those, who on a fuperficial view imagine,

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