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the emotion is excited. It is by this habit of noting each individual quality which produces the emotion of beauty, that we obtain a facility in recognising them whenever we meet them afterwards, separately, or in company with each other; and such is the celerity with which they are recognised, that we can detect a thousand different beauties in a subject, before any one of them has time to produce its own correspondent emotion, in a manner sufficiently sensible to be distinctly felt. It is thus taste is formed: it is by this habit of attention to the sensible and intellectual qualities by which we are moved, that we at length acquire the power of distinguishing, in every object, all the qualities that are adapted to excite the emotion of beauty in minds susceptible of their influence, whether we continue to feel them ourselves or not. How differently would a spectator, who has never paid any attention to the qualities of beauty by which he has been frequently moved, view a painting in which innumerable beauties have been grouped together. He feels, perhaps, but one uniform effect, one simple emotion, from an object in which a thousand causes of pleasing emotions exist. He knows not how the effect he feels is produced, and were he even endowed with that exquisite sensibility which instinctively receives from every quality of beauty that peculiar modification of feeling,-that

sense of delight which it is calculated to impart, and were he accordingly impressed with that rapturous train of corresponding emotions which all these collected beauties were intended by the artist to communicate to the discriminating eye of taste, he would still be ignorant of the manner in which the effect was produced, because he is unacquainted with the qualities of beauty, though he gives testimony to their pleasing and delightful influence. Such a man may be called a man of exquisite sensibility, but cannot be called a man of taste, because he cannot tell why he is pleased, or discern what qualities in the painting give him most particular delight; neither does he know how each individual beauty affects and is affected by the assemblage of beauties with which it associates. He only knows that he is pleased;

that he feels an agreeable tumult of delightful emotions; but beyond this he knows nothing. Not so with the man of taste;-possessed, perhaps, of less sensibility than the former, he can discriminate, notwithstanding, every feature of beauty which the artist has introduced into his work, and can, therefore, refer to all the causes of pleasure, or qualities of beauty, that are engrafted upon it; and therefore, though he may look on them without feeling that vivid and lively pleasure which the former enjoys, he can still tell all the distinct qualities by which this pleasure is im

parted. He possesses another advantage, which particularly distinguishes him from the man of mere sensibility: if his taste be more refined than that of the artist whose production is placed before him, he perceives many things that would heighten its beauty: he perceives whatever is inelegant in the design, affected, or unnatural in the expression, ungraceful in the attitude, or unskilful in the execution. This is a knowledge to which the man of mere sensibilty has no pretensions. Any alterations which he may propose, so far from improving, may only spoil the general effect. He may, for instance, condemn the taste of the ancient Romans, who preferred black eyes to blue-spectandum nigris oculis; he may prefer one form of nose or lips to another; but should the artist comply with his taste, if taste it may be called, which is guided by no acquaintance with the rules of art, he would soon perceive, that the eyes, nose, lips, or expression which suited one person would not suit another, and that the alteration which he had suggested, so far from harmonizing with the other parts of the figure in which it was introduced, had rendered it, perhaps, a very monster.

Hence, then, we see the necessity of distinguishing between the man of taste and the man of mere sensibility. When we confine taste to those only who have that practical experience

of which I have spoken, and who, whether they are feelingly alive or not to each fine impulse, can always point out those qualities in objects which warm into existence this internal emotion in others, and which have often rendered themselves sensible of their chaste and captivating influence, we shall find that the standard of taste is not so difficult to be discovered as some would have us imagine. Men of refined taste seldom differ much in their ideas of beauty; but men who judge of beauty from their own immediate and individual emotions, who judge from what they feel, and not from any previous knowledge or experience, are eternally at variance on the subject. It is not wonderful, therefore, that an opinion should prevail, that beauty is no quality in objects, and has its existence only in the mind; nor is it more strange that the maxim, "it is fruitless to dispute concerning tastes," should descend into a proverb. This, it is true, is not the place to prove the existence of beauty in external objects; but as taste is conversant only in ideal perceptions; if beauty has only an imaginary being, I will examine, in the following chapter, whether there be any qualities in matter or in mind fitted to awaken in us the idea of beauty, or rather fitted to produce those emotions of delight to the exciting cause of which the term beautiful is applied.

CHAP. II.

On Beauty, abstractedly considered, as an Object of Taste.

If beauty be no quality in objects, it is certain that all disputes concerning taste must be extremely absurd, as it is disputing about a supposed something which has no existence. The object of taste, taking it even in the popular sense of the expression, is to perceive and enjoy the beauties of nature and of art. If, then, such beauties have no existence, taste is exercised in the discovery of a phantom of its own creation, and the best taste, consequently, cannot differ from the worst; because the good taste, as well as the bad, is in pursuit of a shadow, or rather the shadow of a shade.

It is certain that this sceptical opinion has entirely originated from that diversity of sentiment regarding beauty, which always has and always will prevail on the subject among men who judge of it, not from that experimental knowledge which I call taste, but from their own immediate feelings

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