Why do not men of superior talents, if they should not always aspire to the praise of a candor so heroic, strive at least, for the honor of the arts which they love, to conceal their ignoble jealousies from the malignity of those, whom incapacity and mortified pride have leagued together, as the covenanted foes of worth and genius? What a triumph has been furnished to the writers who delight in levelling all the proud distinctions of Humanity; and what a stain has been left on some of the fairest pages of our literary history, by the irritable passions and petty hostilities of Pope and of Addison!

The complete forgetfulness of every selfish passion (so beautifully exemplified in the anecdote of Æschines) when the mind is agitated by the enthusiasm of admiration; the sympathetic identification which then takes place of the hearer or reader with the author, was probably what Longinus felt, when he observed, in his account of the Sublime, that "it fills the mind with a glorying and sense of inward greatness, as if it had itself conceived what it has only heard." If the remark should be censured as out of place, when introduced into his statement of the characteristics of Sublimity, it must, at least, be allowed to be happily descriptive of that temper and frame which are essential to its complete enjoyment.-"Voilà le sublime! Voilà son véritable caractère!" is said to have been the exclamation of the great Condé, when Boileau read to him his translation of the above passage.

Having been insensibly led into these reflections on some of the moral defects by which taste is liable to be injured, I cannot help quoting, before I close this view of my subject, a remark of Sir Joshua Reynolds (not altogether unconnected with it,) which appears to me equally refined and just. "The same habit of mind," he observes, "which is acquired by our search after truth in the more serious duties of life, is, in matters of

propter ignominiam judicii cessisset Athenis, et se Rhodum contulisset, rogatus à Rhodiis, legisse fertur orationem illam egregiam, quam in Ctesiphontem contra Demosthenem dixerat: quâ perlectâ, petitum est ab eo postridie, ut legeret illam etiam, quæ erat contrà à Demosthene pro Ctesiphonte edita: quam cùm suavissimâ et maximâ voce legisset, admirantibus omnibus, Quanto,' inquit,magis admiraremini, si audissetis ipsum!""-Cic. de Orat. Lib. III.

taste, only transferred to the pursuit of lighter amusements. The same disposition, the same desire to find something steady, substantial and durable, on which the mind can lean as it were, and rest with safety. The subject only is changed. We pursue the same method in our search after the idea of beauty and perfection in each; of virtue, by looking forward beyond ourselves, to society and to the whole; of arts, by extending our views in the same manner to all ages and all times." In farther illustration of the same idea he observes, "that the real substance of what goes under the name of taste is fixed and established in the nature of things; that there are certain and regular causes by which the imagination and passions of men are affected; and that the knowledge of these causes is acquired by a laborious and diligent investigation of nature, and by the same slow process as wisdom or knowledge of every kind."I would only add, (by way of limitation) that these observations apply rather to that quality of taste which is denoted by the words justness or soundness, than to its sensibility and delicacy; which last circumstances seem to depend, in no inconsiderable degree, on original temperament. The former is unquestionably connected very closely with the love of truth, and with what is perhaps only the same thing under a different form, simplicity of character.

If the account be just which has now been given, of the process by which Taste is formed, and of the various faculties and habits which contribute their share to its composition, we may reasonably expect, where it exists in its highest perfection, to find an understanding, discriminating, comprehensive, and unprejudiced; united with a love of truth and of nature, and with a temper superior to the irritation of little passions. While it implies a spirit of accurate observation and of patient induction, applied to the most fugitive and evanescent class of our mental phenomena, it evinces that power of separating universal associations from such as are local or personal, which, more than any other quality of the mind, is the foundation of good sense, both in scientific pursuits, and in the conduct of life. The intellectual

efforts by which such a taste is formed are, in reality, much more nearly allied than is commonly suspected, to those which are employed in prosecuting the most important and difficult branches of the philosophy of the human mind.

Nor am I inclined to think, that this conclusion will, on examination, appear inconsistent with fact. That a partial taste, confined to some particular art, such as music, painting, or even poetry, may be often found united with an intellect which does not rise above the common level, I very readily grant; although I think it questionable, whether in such an intellect, supposing example and imitation to be altogether out of the question, even a partial taste of this kind could have been originally formed. But the fair test of the soundness of the foregoing reasonings is an instance, in which the good taste of the individual has been the fruit of his own exertions; and in which it extends, more or less, to all the arts which he has made the objects of his study, and which nature has not denied him, by some organical defect in his original constitution, a capacity of enjoying. Where a good taste has been thus formed, I am fully persuaded, that the inferences which I have supposed to follow with respect to the other intellectual powers involved in its composition, will be justified, in all their extent, by an appeal to experience.

The subject might be prosecuted much farther, by examining the varieties of taste in connexion with the varieties of human character. In studying the latter, whether our object be to seize the intellectual or the moral features of the mind, the former will be found to supply as useful and steady a light as any that we can command. To myself it appears to furnish the strongest of them all; more particularly, where the finer and more delicate shades of character are in question.-But the illustration of this remark belongs to some speculations which I destine for a different work.

ESSAY FOURTH.

ON THE CULTURE OF CERTAIN INTELLECTUAL HABITS CONNECTED WITH THE FIRST ELEMENTS OF TASTE.

CHAPTER FIRST.

DEPENDENCE OF TASTE ON A RELISH FOR THE PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. REMARKS ON THE PREVAILING IDEA, THAT THESE ARE TO BE ENJOYED IN PERFECTION, IN YOUth alone.

In what I have hitherto said with respect to Taste, I have considered it chiefly as the native growth of the individual mind to which it belongs; endeavouring to trace it to its first principles or seeds in our intellectual frame. In cases, however, where nature has been so liberal as to render the formation of this power possible, merely from the mind's own internal resources, much may be done by judicious culture in early life; and in all cases whatever, in such a state of society as ours, its growth, even when most completely spontaneous, cannot fail to be influenced, in a greater or less degree, by instruction, by imitation, by the contagion of example, and by various other adventitious causes.

It is reasonable also to believe, that there are numberless minds, in which the seeds of taste, though profusely sown, continue altogether dormant through life; either in consequence of a total want of opportunity to cultivate the habits by which it is to be matured, or of an attention completely engrossed with other pursuits. In instances such as these, it is the province of education to lend her succour; to invigorate, by due exercise, those principles in which an original weakness may be suspected; and, by removing the obstacles which check the expansion of our powers in any of the directions in which nature disposes them to shoot, to enable her to accomplish and to perfect her own designs.

To suggest practical rules for this important purpose would be inconsistent with the limits of a short Essay; and I shall, therefore, confine myself to a few slight hints with respect to some of the more essential propositions on which such rules must proceed.

Before I enter on this subject, it is necessary to premise, that my aim is not to explain how a vitiated or false taste in any of the fine arts may be corrected; or in what manner an imperfect taste may be trained by culture to a state of higher refinement; but to inquire, in the case of an individual, whose thoughts have hitherto been totally engrossed with other pursuits, how far it may be possible, by engaging his attention to a new class of pleasures, to bring his mind into that track of observation and study, by the steady pursuit of which alone (as I have already endeavoured to show) the power of taste is to be gradually and slowly formed. In prosecuting this speculation, I shall have a view more particularly to that species of Taste which has for its object the beauties of external nature, whether presented directly to the senses, or recalled to the imagination, with the modifications and heightenings of poetical or creative invention. Without some portion of this taste, while an essential blank is left in the circle of his most refined enjoyments, the intellectual frame of man is incomplete and mutilated; and, although the fact be undoubtedly the same, more or less, with a taste in music, in painting, in architecture, and various other arts, the difference in point of degree is so immense, as to render the effects unsusceptible of comparison. Nor is this all. The transition from a Taste for the beautiful, to that more comprehensive Taste which extends to all the other pleasures of which poetical fiction is the vehicle, is easy and infallible; and accordingly we shall find, as we proceed in our argument, the subject to which it relates swell insensibly in its dimensions, and branch out, on every side, into numberless ramifications. The hints, therefore, which I am now to suggest, limited as some of them may appear to be in their immediate scope, may, perhaps, contribute to direct into the right path, such of my readers as may aim at conclusions more general than