pher appeals to the acknowledged sources of pleasure in the constitution of human nature. But these sources were at first investigated by experiment and induction, no less than the rules which are deduced from an examination of the beauties of Homer and of Virgil; or, to speak more correctly, it is the former alone that are ascertained by induction, properly so called; while the others often amount to little more than the statements of an empirical and unenlightened experience.

A dispute somewhat analogous to this might be conceived to arise about the comparative distances of two different objects from a particular spot (about the distances, I shall suppose, of two large and spreading Oaks ;) each party insisting confidently on the evidence of his senses, in support of his own judgment. How is it possible to bring them to an agreement, but by appealing to those very circumstances, or signs, upon which all our perceptions of distance proceed, even when we are the least aware of any exercise of thought? If the one party should observe, for instance, to his companion, that the minute parts of the tree, which the latter affirms to be the most remote,-that its smaller ramifications, its foliage, and the texture of its bark, are seen much more distinctly than the corresponding parts of the other; he could not fail in immediately convincing him of the inaccuracy of his estimate. In like manner, the philosophical principles of criticism, when obtained by an extensive and cautious induction, may be fairly appealed to in questions of taste; although Taste itself, considered as a power of the mind, must, in every individual, be the result of his own personal experience; no less than the acquired powers of perception by which his eye estimates the distances and magnitudes of objects. In this point of view, therefore, we may apply literally to intellectual taste, the assertion formerly quoted from Quinctilian: "Non magis arte traditur quam gustus aut odor."

I must not conclude this branch of my subject without doing justice to some authors who appear to have entertained perfectly just and correct ideas concerning the nature of Taste, as an acquired principle, although none

pro

of them, as far as I know, has at all examined the cess by which it is generated. The first author I shall quote is Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose sagacity often seizes happily on the truth, without the formality of logical deduction. "The real substance," he observes,

"of what goes under the name of taste, is fixed and established in the nature of things. There are certain and regular causes by which the imagination and the passions of men are affected; and the knowledge of these causes is acquired by a laborious and diligent investigation of nature, and by the same slow progress, as wisdom or knowledge of every kind, however instantaneous its operations may appear, when thus acquired."

Mr. Burke has stated still more explicitly his dissent from the opinion, that "taste is a separate faculty of the mind, and distinct from the judgment and imagination; a species of instinct, by which we are struck naturally, and at the first glance, without any previous reasoning, with the excellencies, or the defects of a composition." -"So far," he continues, " as the imagination and the passions are concerned, I believe it true, that the reason is little consulted; but where disposition, where decorum, where congruity, are concerned, in short, wherever the best taste differs from the worst, I am convinced that the understanding operates, and nothing else; and its operation is in reality far from being always sudden, or, when it is sudden, it is often far from being right. Men of the best taste, by consideration, come frequently to change those early and precipitate judgments, which the mind, from its aversion to neutrality and doubt, loves to form on the spot. It is known that the taste (whatever it is) is improved exactly as we improve our judgment, by extending our knowledge, by a steady attention to our object, and by frequent exercise. They who have not taken these methods, if their taste decides quickly, it is always uncertainly; and their quickness is owing to their presumption and rashness, and not any hidden irradiation that in a moment dispels all darkness from their minds. But they who have cultivated that species of knowledge which makes the

object of taste, by degrees, and habitually, attain not only a soundness, but a readiness of judgment, as men do by the same methods on all other occasions. At first they are obliged to spell, but at last they read with ease and with celerity; but this celerity of its operation is no proof that the taste is a distinct faculty. Nobody, I believe, has attended the course of a discussion, which turned upon matter within the sphere of mere naked reason, but must have observed the extreme readiness with which the whole process of the argument is carried on, the grounds discovered, the objections raised and answered, and the conclusions drawn from premises, with a quickness altogether as great as the taste can be supposed to work with; and yet where nothing but plain reason either is, or can be suspected to operate. To multiply principles for every different appearance is useless, and unphilosophical too, in a high degree."

The only other passage I shall add to these quotations is from Mr. Hughes, who, almost a century ago, described the nature and genesis of taste, with admirable good sense, and conciseness, in the following terms: "What we call Taste, is a kind of extempore judgment; it is a settled habit of distinguishing, without staying to attend to rules or ratiocination, and arises from long use and experience."

I intend to resume, on some future occasion, the subject of this Chapter, and to illustrate that progress of Taste from rudeness to refinement, which accompanies the advancement of social civilization. In this respect its history will be found to be somewhat analogous to that of human reason; the taste of each successive age being formed on the study of more perfect models than that of the age before it; and leaving, in its turn, to after times a more elevated ground-work, on which they may raise their own superstructure.

This traditionary Taste (imbibed in early life, partly from the received rules of critics, and partly from the study of approved models of excellence) is all that the bulk of men aspire to, and perhaps all that they are qualified to acquire. But it is the province of a leading

mind to outstrip its contemporaries, by instituting new experiments for its own improvement; and, in proportion as the observation and experience of the race are enlarged, the means are facilitated of acomplishing such combinations with success, by the multiplication of those selected materials out of which they are to be formed.

In individuals of this discription, Taste includes Genius as one of its elements; as Genius, in any one of the fine arts, necessarily implies a certain portion of Taste. In both cases, precepts and models, although of inestimable value, leave much to be done by an inventive imagination.

In the mind of a man who feels and judges for himself, a large proportion of the rules which guide his decisions exist only in his own understanding. Many of them he probably never thought of clothing with language even to himself; and some of them would certainly, if he should attempt to embody them in words, elude all his efforts to convey their import to others.

"What we call genius," says Reynolds, "begins, not where rules, abstractedly taken, end; but where known, vulgar, and trite rules have no longer any place.' It is true, these refined principles cannot be always made palpable, like the more gross rules of art; yet it does not follow, but that the mind may be put in such a train, that it shall perceive, by a kind of scientific sense, that propriety, which words can but very feebly suggest."

All this will be found to apply literally to original or inventive Taste, and to suggest matter for very curious and useful reflection.-But some other views of this power appear to me to form a more natural sequel to the foregoing observations; and to these accordingly, I shall confine myself at present, in the farther prosecution of the subject of this Essay.

CHAPTER THIRD.

DIFFERENT MODIFICATIONS OF TASTE.-DISTINCTION BETWEEN TASTE, AND THE NATURAL SENSIBILITY TO BEAUTY.

FROM the account formerly given of the origin and progress of our notions with respect to the Beautiful, it appeared, that the circumstances which please in objects of Taste, are of two very different kinds. First, those which derive their effect from the organical adaptation of the human frame to the external universe; and Secondly, those which please in consequence of associations formed gradually by experience. Among the various particulars belonging to this second class (a class which comprehends by far the most important elements which, in such an age as ours, enter into the composition of the beautiful) a very obvious distinction may be made. (1.) Such beauties as owe their existence to associations resulting necessarily from the common circumstances of the human race; and therefore extending their influence, more or less, to all mankind. Examples of these universal associations occur in the uniformity of language (remarked in the two preceding Essays) among various civilized nations, in speaking of Beauty and of Sublimity. (2.) Beauties which have no merit but what depends on custom and fashion; or on certain peculiarities in the situation and history of the individual. Of the two last descriptions of beauty, the former, it is evident, agree in one very essential respect, with the organical beauties first mentioned. Both of them have their source in the principles of Human Nature (comprehending under this phrase, not only the natural constitution, but the natural condition of man ;) and, accordingly, they both fall under the consideration of that sort of criticism which forms a branch of the philosophy of the human mind. The associations on which they are founded, have equally a claim to a place among the elements of the Beautiful; nor can any theory of Beau