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tinued motion, are ever beautiful. The

$227. On the Origin of our general Ideas beauty of colours may perhaps be arranged.

of Beauty.

A full and consistent evidence of design, especially if the design be attended with an important effect, gives the idea of beauty; thus a ship under sail, a greyhound, a wellshaped horse, are beautiful, because they display with ease a great design. Birds and beasts of prey, completely armed for destruction, are for the same reason beautiful, although objects of terror.

Where different designs at a single view, appear to concur to one effect, the beauty accumulates; as in the Grecian architecture: where different designs, leading to different effects, unite in the same whole, they cause confusion, and diminish the idea of beauty, as in the Gothic buildings. Upon the same principle, confusion and disorder are ugly or frightful; the figures made by spilled liquors are always ugly. Regular figures are handsome; and the circular, the most regular, is the most beautiful. This regulation holds only where the sublime does not enter; for in that case the irregularity and carelessness add to the ideas of power, and raise in proportion our admiration. The confusion in which we see the stars scattered over the heavens, and the rude arrangement of mountains, add to their grandeur.

A mixture of the sublime aids exceedingly the idea of beauty, and heightens the horrors of disorder and ugliness. Personal beauty is vastly raised by a noble air; on the contrary, the dissolution and ruins of a large city, distress the mind proportionally: but while we mourn over great ruins, at the destruction of our species, we are also soothed by the generous commisera tion we feel in our own breast, and there; fore ruins give us the same kind of grateful melancholy we feel at a tragedy. Of all the objects of discord and confusion, no other is so shocking as the human soul in madness. When we see the principle of thought and beauty disordered, the horror is too high, like that of a massacre committed before our eyes, to suffer the mind to make any reflex act on the god-like traces of pity that distinguish our species:

and we feel no sensations but those of dismay and terror.

under this head; colours, like notes of music, affect the passions; red incites anger, black to melancholy! white brings a gentle joy to the mind; the softer colours refresh or relax it. The mixtures and gradations of colours have an effect correspondent to the transitions and combinations of sounds; but the strokes are too transient and feeble to become the objects of expression.

Beauty also results from every disposition of nature that plainly discovers her favour and indulgence to us. Thus the spring

season, when the weather becomes mild, the verdant fields, trees loaded with fruit or covered with shade, clear springs, but particularly the human face, where the gentle passions are delineated, are beyond expression beautiful. On the same principle, inclement wintry skies, trees strip. ped of their verdure, desert barren lands, and, above all, death, are frightful and shocking. I must, however, observe, that I do not by any means suppose that the sentiment of beauty arises from a reflex considerate act of the mind, upon the ob servation of the designs of nature or of art: the sentiment of beauty is instantaneous, All I mean is, that design and beauty are and depends upon no prior reflections. in an arbitrary manner united together; so that where we see the one, whether we reflect on it or no, we perceive the other. I must further add, that there may be other divisions of beauty easily discoverable, which I have not taken notice of.

The general sense of beauty, as well as of grandeur, seems peculiar to man in the creation. The herd in common with him

enjoy the gentle breath of spring; they lie down to repose on the flowery bank, and hear the peaceful humming of the bee; they enjoy the green fields and pastures: but we have reason to think, that it is man only who sees the image of beauty over the happy prospect, and rejoices at it; that it is hid from the brute creation, and depends not upon sense, but on the intelligent mind.

We have just taken a transient view of the principal departments of taste; let us now, madam, make a few general reflections upon our subject. Usher.

$228. Sense, Taste and Genius, distinguished.

Regular motion and life shewn in inanimate objects, give us also the secret pleasure we call beauty. Thus waves spent, and successively breaking upon the shore, The human genius, with the best assistand waving fields of corn and grass in con- ance, and the finest examples, breaks forth

but

but slowly; and the greatest men have but gradually acquired a just taste, and chaste simple conceptions of beauty. At an immature age, the sense of beauty is weak and confused, and requires an excess of colouring to catch its attention. It then prefers extravagance and rant to justness, a gross false wit to the engaging light of nature, and the shewy, rich, and glaring, to the fine and amiable. This is the childhood of taste; but as the human genius strengthens and grows to maturity, if it be assisted by a happy education, the sense of universal beauty awakes; it begins to be disgusted with the false and misshapen deceptions that pleased before, and rests with delight on elegant simplicity, on pictures of easy beauty and unaffected grandeur.

The progress of the fine arts in the human mind may be fixed at three remark. able degrees, from their foundation to the loftiest height. The basis is a sense of beauty and of the sublime, the second step we may call taste, and the last genius.

A sense of the beautiful and of the great is universal, which appears from the uniformity thereof in the most distant ages and nations. What was engaging and sublime in ancient Greece and Rome, are so at this day and, as I observed before, there is not the least necessity of improvement or science, to discover the charms of a graceful or noble deportment. There is a fine but an ineffectual light in the breast of man. After nightfall we have admired the planet Venus; the beauty and vivacity of her lustre, the immense distance from which we judged her beams issued, and the silence of the night, all concurred to strike us with an agreeable amazement. But she shone in distinguished beauty, without giving sufficient light to direct our steps, or shew us the objects around us. Thus in unimproved nature, the light of the mind is bright and useless. In utter barbarity, our prospect of it is still less fixed; it appears, and then again seems wholly to vanish in the savage breast, like the same planet Venus, when she has but just raised her orient beams to mariners above the waves, and is now descried, and now lost, through the swelling billows.

The next step is taste, the subject of our enquiry, which consists in a distinct, unconfused knowledge of the great and beautiful. Although you see not many possessed of a good taste, yet the generality of mankind are capable of it. The very populace of Athens had acquired a good

taste by habit and fine example, so that a delicacy of judgment seemed natural to all who breathed the air of that elegant city: we find a manly and elevated sense distinguish the common people of Rome and of all the cities of Greece, while the level of mankind was preserved in those cities; while the plebeians had a share in the government, and an utter separation was not made between them and the nobles, by wealth and luxury. But when once the common people are rent asunder wholly from the great and opulent, and made subservient to the luxury of the latter; then the taste of nature infallibly takes her flight from both parties. The poor by a sordid habit, and an attention wholly confined to mean views, and the rich by an attention to the changeable modes of fancy, and a vitiated preference for the rich and costly, lose view of simple beauty and grandeur. It may seem a paradox, and yet I am firmly persuaded, that it would be easier at this day to give a good taste to the young savages of America, than to the noble youth of Europe.

Genius, the pride of man, as man is of the creation, has been possessed but by few, even in the brightest ages. Men of superior genius, while they see the rest of mankind painfully struggling to comprehend obvious truths, glance themselves through the most remote consequences, like lightning through a path that cannot be traced. They see the beauties of nature with life and warmth, and paint them forcibly without effort, as the morning sun does the scenes he rises upon; and in se veral instances, communicate to objects a morning freshness and unaccountable lus tre, that is not seen in the creation of nature. The poet, the statuary, the painter, have produced images that left nature far behind.

The constellations of extraordinary personages who appeared in Greece and Rome, at or near the same period of time, after ages of darkness to which we know no beginning; and the long barrenness of those countries after in great men, prove that genius owes much of its lustre to a personal contest of glory, and the strong rival ship of great examples within actual view and knowledge; and that great parts alone are not able to lift a person out of barba rity. It is further to be observed, that when the inspiring spirit of the fine arts retired, and left inanimate and cold the breasts of poets, painters, and statuaries,

men

men of taste still remained, who distinguished and admired the beauteous monuments of genius; but the power of execution was lost; and although monarchs loved and courted the arts, yet they refused to return. From whence it is evident, that neither taste, nor natural parts, form the creating genius that inspired the great masters of antiquity, and that they owed their extraordinary powers to something different from both.

If we consider the numbers of men who wrote well, and excelled in every department of the liberal arts, in the ages of genius, and the simplicity that always attends beauty; we must be led to think, that although few perhaps can reach to the supreme beauty of imagination displayed by the first-rate poets, orators, and philosophers; yet most men are capable of just thinking and agreeable writing. Nature lies very near, our reflection, and will appear, if we be not misled and prejudiced before the sense of beauty grows to maturity. The populace of Athens and Rome prove strongly, that uncommon parts or great learning are not necessary to make men think justly.

Usher.

§ 229. Thoughts on the Human Capacity.

We know not the bounds of taste, because we are unacquainted with the extent and boundaries of the human genius. The mind in ignorance is like a sleeping giant; it has immense capacities without the power of using them. By listening to the lectures of Socrates, men grew heroes, philosophers, and legislators; for he of all mankind seemed to have discovered the short and lightsome path to the faculties of the mind. To give you an instance of the human capacity, that comes more immediately within your notice, what graces, what sentiments, have been transplanted into the motion of a minuet, of which a savage

has no conception! We know not to what degree of rapture harmony is capable of being carried, nor what hidden powers may be in yet unexperienced beauties of the imagination, whose objects are in scenes and in worlds we are strangers to. Children who die young, have no conception of the sentiment of personal beauty. Are we certain that we are not yet children in respect to several species of beauties? We are ignorant whether there be not passions in the soul, that have

hitherto remained unawaked and undiscovered for want of objects to rouse them : we feel plainly that some such are gently agitated and moved by certain notes of music. In reality, we know not but the taste and capacity of beauty and grandeur in the soul, may extend as far beyond all we actually perceive, as this whole world exceeds the sphere of a cockle or an oyster. Ibid.

§ 230. Taste how depraved and lost.

Let us now consider by what means taste is usually depraved and lost in a nation, that is neither conquered by barbarians, nor has lost the improvements in agriculture, husbandry, and defence, that allow men leisure for reflection and embellishment. I observed before that this natural light is not so clear in the greatest men, but it may lie oppressed by barbarity. When people of mean parts, and of pride without genius, get into elevated stations, they want a taste for simple gran. deur, and mistake for it what is uncommonly glaring and extraordinary; whence proceeds false wit of every kind, a gaudy richness in dress, an oppressive load of ornament in building, and a grandeur overstrained and puerile universally. I must observe, that people of bad taste and little genius almost always lay a great stress on trivial matters, and are ostentatious and exact in singularities, or in a decorum in trifles. When people of mean parts appear in high stations, and at the head of the fashionable world, they cannot fail to introduce a false embroidered habit of mind: people of nearly the same genius, who make up the crowd, will admire and follow them; and at length solitary taste, adorned only by noble simplicity, will be lost in the general example.

Also when a nation is much corrupted; when avarice and a love of gain have seized upon the hearts of men; when the nobles ignominiously bend their necks to corruption and bribery, or enter into the base mysteries of gaming; then decency, elevated principles, and greatness of soul, expire; and all that remains is a comedy or puppet-shew of elegance, in which the dancing-master and peer are upon a level, and the mind is understood to have no part in the drama of politeness, or else to act under a mean disguise of virtues which it is not possessed of.

2 H

Ibid. $231.

$231.

Some Reflections on the Human
Mind.

Upon putting together the whole of our reflections you see two different natures laying claim to the human race, and dragging it different ways. You see a necessity, that arises from our situation and circumstances, bending us down into unworthy misery and sordid baseness; and you see, when we can escape from the insulting ty. ranny of our fate, and acquire ease and freedom, a generous nature, that lay stupefied and oppressed, begin to awake and charm us with prospects of beauty and glory. This awaking genius gazes in rapture at the beauteous and elevating scenes of nature. The beauties of nature are familiar, and charm it like a mother's bosom; and the objects which have the plain marks of immense power and grandeur, raise in it a still, an inquisitive, and trembling delight: but genius often throws over the objects of its conceptions colours finer than those of nature, and opens a paradise that exists no where but in its own creations, The bright and peaceful scenes of Arcadia, and the lovely descriptions of pastoral poetry, never existed on earth, no more than Pope's shepherds or the river gods of Windsor forest: it is all but a charming illusion, which the mind first paints with celestial colours, and then languishes for. Knight-errantry is another kind of delusion, which, though it be fictitious in fact, yet is true in sentiment. I believe there are few people who in their youth, 'before they be corrupted by the commerce of the world, are not knighterrants and princesses in their hearts. The soul, in a beauteous ecstasy, communicates a flame to words which they had not; and poetry, by its quick transitions, bold figures, lively images, and the variety of efforts to paint the latent rapture, bears witness, that the confused ideas of the mind are still infinitely superior, and beyond the reach of all description. It is this divine spirit that, when roused from its lethargy, breathes in noble sentiments, that charms in elegance, that stamps upon marble or canvass the figures of gods and heroes, that inspires them with an air above humanity, and leads the soul through the enchanting meanders of music in a waking vision, through which it cannot break, to discover the near objects that charm it.

How shall we venture to trace the objest of this surprising beauty peculiar to

genius, which evidently does not come to the mind from the senses? It is not conveyed in sound, for we feel the sounds of music charm us by gently agitating and swelling the passions, and setting some passions afloat, for which we have no name, and knew not until they were awaked in the mind by harmony. This beauty does not arrive at the mind by the ideas of vi sion, though it be moved by them: for it evidently bestows on the mimic represen tations and images the mind makes of the objects of sense, an enchanting loveliness that never existed in those objects. Where shall the soul find this amazing beauty, whose very shadow, glimmering upon the imagination, opens unspeakable raptures in it, and distracts it with languishing plea. sure? What are those stranger sentiments that lie in wait in the soul, until music calls them forth? What is the obscure but unavoidable value or merit of virtue? or who is the law-maker in the mind who gives it a worth and dignity beyond all estima tion, and punishes the breach of it with conscious terror and despair? What is it in objects of immeasurable power and gran. deur, that we look for with still amaze ment and awful delight ?But I find, madam, we have been insensibly led into subjects too abstruse and severe; I must not put the graces with whom we have been conversing to flight, and draw the serious air of meditation over that countenance where the smiles naturally dwell.

I have, in consequence of your permis. sion, put together such thoughts as occur red to me on good taste. I told you, if I had leisure hereafter, I would dispose of them with more regularity, and add any new observations that I may make. Be. fore I finish, I must in justice make my acknowledgments of the assistance I re ceived. I took notice, at the beginning, that Rollin's Observations on Taste gave occasion to this discourse. Sir Harry Beau mont's polished dialogue on beauty, called Crito, was of service to me; and I have availed myself of the writings and senti ments of the ancients, particularly of the poets and statuaries of Greece, which was the native and original country of the graces and fine arts. But I should be very unjust, if I did not make my chief acknow ledgments where they are more peculiarly due. If your modesty will not suffer me to draw that picture from which I bor rowed my ideas of elegance, I am bound

at

at least, in honesty, to disclaim every merit but that of copying from a bright original. Usher.

$232. General Reflections upon what is called Good Taste. From ROLLIN'S Belles Lettres.

Taste as it now falls under our consideration, that is, with reference to the reading of authors, and composition, is a clear, lively, and distinct discerning of all the beauty, truth, and justness of the thoughts and expressions, which compose a discourse. It distinguishes what is conformable to eloquence and propriety in every character, and suitable in different circumstances. And whilst, with a delicate, ⚫ and exquisite sagacity, it notes the graces, turns, manners, and expressions, most likely to please, it perceives also all the defects which produce the contrary effect, and distinguishes precisely wherein those defects consist, and how far they are removed from the strict rules of art, and the real beauties of nature.

This happy faculty, which it is more easy to conceive than define, is less the effect of genius than judgment, and a kind of natural reason wrought up to perfection by study. It serves in composition to guide and direct the understanding. It makes use of the imagination, but without sub mitting to it, and keeps it always in subjection. It consults nature universally, follows it step by step, and is a faithful image of it. Reserved and sparing in the midst of abundance and riches, it dispenses the beauties and graces of discourse with temper and wisdom. It never suffers itself to be dazzled with the false, how glittering a figure soever it may make. "Tis equally offended with too much and too little. It knows precisely where it must stop, and cuts off, without regret or mercy, whatever exceeds the beautiful and perfect. 'Tis the want of this quality which occasions the various species of bad style; as bombast, conceit, and witticism; in which, as Quinctilian says, the genius is void of judgment, and suffers itself to be carried away with an appearance of beauty, quoties ingenium judicio caret, & specie boni fallitur.

Taste, simple and uniform in its principle, is varied and multiplied an infinite number of ways, yet so as under a thousand different forms, in prose or verse, in a declamatory or concise, sublime or simple, jocose or serious style, 'tis always the

same, and carries with it a certain character of the true and natural, immediately perceived by all persons of judgment. We cannot say the style of Terence, Phædrus, Sallust, Cæsar, Tully, Livy, Virgil, and Horace, is the same. And yet they have all, if I may be allowed the expression, a certain tincture of a common spirit, which in that diversity of genius and style makes an affinity between them, and the sensible difference also betwixt them and the other writers, who have not the stamp of the best age of antiquity upon them.

I have already said, that this distinguishing faculty was a kind of natural reason wrought up to perfection by study. In reality all men bring the first principles of taste with them into the world, as well as those of rhetoric and logic. As a proof of this, we may urge, that every good orator is almost always infallibly approved of by the people, and that there is no difference of taste and sentiment upon this point, as Tully observes, between the ignorant and the learned.

The case is the same with music and painting. A concert, that has all its parts well composed and well executed, both as to instruments and voices, pleases universally. But if any discord arises, any ill tone of voice be intermixed, it shall displease even those who are absolutely igno rant of music. They know not what it is that offends them, but they find somewhat grating in it to their ears. And this proceeds from the taste and sense of harmony implanted in them by nature. In like manner, a fine picture charms and transports a spectator, who has no idea of painting. Ask him what pleases him, and why it pleases him, and he cannot easily give an account, or specify the real reasons; but natural sentiment works almost the same effect in him as art and use in connoisseurs.

The like observations will hold good as to the taste we are here speaking of. Most men have the first principles of it in themselves, though in the greater part of them they lie dormant in a manner, for want of instruction or reflection; as they are often stifled or corrupted by vicious education, bad customs, or reigning prejudices of the age and country.

But how depraved soever the taste may be, it is never absolutely lost. There are certain fixed remains of it, deeply rooted in the understanding, wherein all men agree. Where these secret seeds are cul2H 2 tivated

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