they cannot make barrenness fruitful, they can correct redundancy. They present proper models for imitation; they point out the principal beauties which ought to be studied, and the chief faults which ought to be avoided; and consequently tend to enlighten taste, and to conduct genius from unnatural deviations into its proper channel. Though they are incapable of producing great excellencies, they may at least serve to prevent considerable mistakes. In the education of youth, no object has appeared more important to wise men in every age, than to excite in them an early relish for the entertainments of taste. From these to the discharge of the higher and more important duties of life the transition is natural and easy. Of those minds, which have this elegant and liberal turn, the most pleasing hopes may be entertained. On the contrary, entire insensibility, to eloquence, poetry, or any of the fine arts, may justly be considered, as a bad symptom in youth; and supposes them inclined to low gratifications, or capable of being engaged only in the common pursuits of life. Improvement of taste seems to be more or less connected with every good and virtuous disposition. By giving frequent exercises to the tender and humane passions, a cultivated taste increases sensibility; yet, at the same time, it tends to soften the more violent and angry emotions. Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes These polish'd arts have humaniz'd mankind, Poetry, eloquence, and history continually exhibit to our view those elevated sentiments and high examples, which tend to nourish in our minds public spirit, love of glory, contempt of external fortune, and admiration of every thing, truly great, noble, and illustrious. LECTURES ON RHETORIC. ABRIDGED. TASTE. TASTE is "the power of receiving pleasure or pain from the beauties or deformities of nature and of art.") It is a faculty common in some degree to all men. Through the circle of human nature, nothing is more general, than the relish of beauty of one kind or other; of what is orderly, proportioned, grand, harmonious, new, or sprightly. Nor does there prevail less generally a disrelish of whatever is gross, disproportioned, disorderly, and discordant. In children the rudiments of taste appear very early in a thousand instances; in their partiality for regular bodies, their fondness for pictures and statues, and their warm attachment to whatever is new or astonishing. The most stupid peasants receive pleasure from tales and ballads, and are delighted with the beautiful appearances of nature in the earth and heavens. Even in the deserts of America, where human nature appears in its most uncultivated state, the savages have their ornaments of dress, their war and their death songs, their harangues and their orators. The principles of taste must therefore be deeply founded in the human mind. To have some discernment of beauty is no less essential to man, than to possess the attributes of speech and reason. Though no human being can be entirely devoid of this faculty, yet it is possessed in very different degrees. In some men only faint glimmerings of taste are visible; the beauties, which they relish are of the coarsest kind; and of these they have only a weak and confused impression; while in others, taste rises to an acute discernment, and a lively enjoyment of the most refined beauties. This inequality of taste among men is to be ascribed undoubtedly in part, to the different frame of their natures; to nicer organs, and more delicate internal powers, with which some are endued beyond others; yet it is owing still more to culture and education. Taste is certainly one of the most improvable faculties of our nature. We may easily be convinced of the truth of this assertion by only reflecting on that immense superiority, which education and improvement give to civilized, above barbarous nations, in refinement of taste; and on the advantage, which they give in the same nation, to those, who have studied the liberal arts, above the rude and illiterate vulgar. Reason and good sense have so extensive an influence on all the operations and decisions of taste, that a completely good taste may well be considered, as a power compounded of natural sensibility to beauty, and of improved understanding. To be satisfied of this, we may observe, that the greater part of the productions of genius are no other than imitations of nature; representations of the characters, actions, or manners of men. Now the pleasure we experience from such imitations or representations, is founded on mere taste; but to judge, whether they be properly executed, belongs to the understanding, which compares the copy with the original. In reading, for instance, the Eneid of Virgil, a great part of our pleasure arises from the proper conduct of the plan or story; from all the parts being joined together with probability and due connection; from the adoption of the characters from nature, the correspondence of the sentiments to the characters, and of the style to the sentiments. The pleasure, which is derived from a poem so conducted, is felt or enjoyed by taste, as an internal sense; but the discovery of this conduct in the poem is owing to reason; and the more reason enables us to discover such propriety in the conduct, the greater will be our pleasure. The constituents of taste, when brought to its most perfect state, are two, delicacy and cor rectness. Delicacy of taste refers principally to the perfection of that natural sensibility, on which taste is founded. It implies those finer organs or powers, which enable us to discover beauties, that are concealed from a vulgar eye. It is B |