Essays on Taste Part 2

Thus he who heavenly Maro truly feels Stands fix'd on Raphael, and at Handel thrills.

The grosser senses too, the taste, the smell, } 235 Are likely truest where the fine prevail: } Who doubts that Horace must have cater'd well? } Friend, I'm a shrewd observer, and will guess What books you doat on from your fav'rite mess, Brown and L'Estrange will surely charm whome'er The frothy pertness strikes of weak small-beer.

Who steeps the calf's fat loin in greasy sauce Will hardly loathe the praise that bastes an a.s.s.

Who riots on Scotcht Collops scorns not any Insipid, fulsome, trashy miscellany; 245 And who devours whate'er the cook can dish up, Will for a cla.s.sic consecrate each[A] bishop.

[Footnote A: See Felton's Cla.s.sics.]

But I am sick of pen and ink; and you Will find this letter long enough. Adieu!

OF GENIUS

There is a standard of right and wrong in the nature of things, of beauty and deformity, both in the natural and moral world. And as different minds happen to be more or less exquisite, the more or less sensibly do they perceive the various degrees, of good and bad, and are the more or less susceptible of being charmed with what is right or beautiful, and disgusted with what is wrong or deformed. It is chiefly this sensibility that const.i.tutes genius; to which a sound head and a good heart are as effectual as a lively imagination. And a man of true genius must necessarily have as exquisite a feeling of the moral beauties, as of whatever is great or beautiful in the works of nature; or masterly in the arts which imitate nature, in poetry, painting, statuary, and music.

On the other side, where the heart is very bad, the genius and taste, if there happen to be any pretensions to them, will be found shocking and unnatural. NERO would be nothing less than a poet; but his verses were what one may call most _villainously_ bad. His taste of magnificence and luxury was horribly glaring, extravagant and unnatural to the last degree.

CALIGULA's taste was so outragiously wrong, that he detested the works of the sweet MANTUAN poet more pa.s.sionately than ever MOECENAS admired them; and if VIRGIL had unfortunately lived down to those times in which that monster appeared, he would probably have been tortured to death for no other crime but that he wrote naturally, and like an honest man.

True genius may be said to consist of a perfect polish of soul, which receives and reflects the images that fall upon it, without warping or distortion. And this fine polish of soul is, I believe, constantly attended with what philosophers call the moral truth.

There are minds which receive objects truly, and feel the impressions they ought naturally to make, in a very lively manner, but want the faculty of reflecting them; as there are people who, I suppose, feel all the charms of poetry without being poets themselves.

OF TASTE.

Our notion of taste may be easily understood by what has been said upon the subject of genius; for mere good taste is nothing else but genius without the power of execution.

It must be born; and is to be improved chiefly by being accustomed, and the earlier the better, to the most exquisite objects of taste in its various kinds. For the taste in writing and painting, and in every thing else, is insensibly formed upon what we are accustomed to; as well as taste in eating and drinking. One who from his youth has been used to drink nothing but heavy dismal port, will not immediately acquire a relish for claret or burgundy.

In the most stupid ages there is more good taste than one would at first sight imagine. Even the present, abuse it with what contemptuous epithets you please, cannot be totally void of it. As long as there are n.o.ble humane and generous dispositions amongst mankind, there must be good taste. For in general, I do not say always, the taste will be in proportion to those moral qualities and that sensibility of mind from which they take their rise. And while many, amongst the great and the learned, are allowed to have taste for no better reason than that it is their own opinion, it is often possessed by those who are not conscious of it, and dream as little of pretending to it as to a star and garter. An honest farmer, or shepherd, who is acquainted with no language but what is spoken in his own county, may have a much truer relish of the _English_ writers than the most dogmatical pedant that ever erected himself into a commentator, and from his _Gothic_ chair, with an ill-bred arrogance, dictated false criticism to the gaping mult.i.tude.

But even those who are endued with good natural taste, often judge implicitly and by rote, without ever consulting their own taste.

Instances of this pa.s.sive indolence, or rather this unconsciousness of one's own faculties, appear every day; not only in the fine arts, but in cases where the mere _taste_, according to the original meaning of the word, is alone concerned. For I am positive there are many thousands who, if they were to bring their own palate to a severe examination, would discover that they really find a more delicious flavour in mutton than in venison, in flounder than in turbut, and yet prefer middling or bad venison to the best mutton; that is, what is scarcest and dearest, and consequently what is, from the folly of mankind, the most in vogue, to what is really the most agreeable to their own private taste.

In matter of taste, the public, for the most part, suffers itself to be led by a few who perhaps are really no judges; but who, under the favour of some advantages of t.i.tle, place, or fortune, set up for judges, and are implicitly followed even by those who have taste.

These washy dictators have learnt at school to admire such authors as have for ages been possessed of an indisputed renown: but they would never have been the first to have discovered strokes of true genius in a co-temporary writer, though they had lived at the court of AUGUSTUS or of Q. ELIZABETH.

So undistinguis.h.i.+ng is our taste, that if the most torpid dunce this fruitful age can boast of, could by some artful imposture prepossess the public, that the most insipid of all his own bread-sauce compositions, to be published next winter, was a piece MILTON's, or any other celebrated author, recovered from dust and obscurity, it would be received with universal applause; and perhaps be translated into _French_ before the town had doated six weeks upon it. One might venture to say too, that if a work of true spirit and genius was to be introduced into the world, under the name of some writer of low reputation, it would be rejected even by the greatest part of those who pretend to lead the taste. And no wonder, while an eminent vintner has mistaken his own old hock at nine s.h.i.+llings the bottle for that at five.

OF WRITING TO THE TASTE OF THE AGE.

Whatever some have pretended, one may reasonably enough doubt whether ever an author wrote much below himself from any cause but the necessity of writing too fast. When this happens to a writer who, with the advantages of leisure and easy circ.u.mstances, is capable of producing such works as might charm succeeding ages, it is a disgrace to the nation and the times wherein such a genius had the misfortune to appear.

It belongs to true genius to indulge its own humour; to give a loose to its own sallies; and to be curbed, restrained and directed by that sound judgment alone which necessarily attends it. It belongs to it to improve and correct the public taste; not to humour or meanly prost.i.tute itself to the gross or low taste which it finds. And you may depend upon it, that whatever author labours to accommodate himself to the taste of his age--suppose it, if you please, this present age--the sickly wane, the impotent decline of the eighteenth century: which from a hopeful boy became a most insignificant man; and for any thing that appears at present will die a very fat drowsy block-head, and be d.a.m.ned to eternal infamy and contempt: every such author I say, though he may thrive as far as an author can in the present age, will by degrees languish into obscurity in the next.

For though naked and bare-faced vanity; though an active exertion of little arts, and the most unremitting perseverance in them; though party, cabal, and intrigue; though accidental advantages, and even whimsical circ.u.mstances; may conspire to make a very moderate genius the idol of the implicit mult.i.tude: works that lean upon such fickle props, that stand upon such a false foundation, will not be long able to support themselves against the injuries of time. Such buildings begin to totter almost as soon as their scaffolding is struck.

But if you find it necessary to comply with the humour of your age; the writing best calculated to please a false taste is what has something of the air of good writing, without being really so. For to the vulgar eye the specious is more striking than the genuine. The best writing is apt to be too plain, too simple, too unaffected, and too delicate to stir the callous organs of the generality of critics, who see nothing but the tawdry glare of tinsel; and are deaf to every thing but what is shockingly noisy to a true ear. They are struck with the fierce glaring colours of old _Frank_; with att.i.tudes and expressions violent, distorted, and unnatural: while the true, just and easy, the graceful, the moving, the sublime representations of _Raphael_ have not the least power to attract them. The bullying, noisy march in _Judas Macchabeus_ has perhaps more sincere admirers than that most pathetic one in _Saul_: and in conversation pertness and mere vivacity is more felt by the general run of company than easy unaffected wit; as flashy, bouncing, flatulent cyder boasts of more spirit than the still vigour of reserved _Madeira_.

But the easiest, as well as the most effectual way of writing to the bad taste of your age, is to set out while your genius is yet upon a level with it. Accordingly, if you have a son who begins to display a hopeful bloom of imagination, be sure to publish, with all the advantages that can be procured, the very first essays of his genius.

They will hardly be too good to please; and besides, they have a chance to be received with particular favour and admiration as the productions of a young muse. When he has thus taken possession of the public ear, he may venture, as his genius ripens, to do his best; he may write as well as he can, perhaps without much danger of sinking in reputation. The renown of his first crude essays will be sufficient to prejudice the mobility, great and small, in favour of the most exquisite pieces he can produce afterwards. But if he must live by his wit, the best thing you can do for him is to transplant him, as early as possible, to PARIS; where in the worst of days, in the most _Gothic_ muse-detesting age, there is still some shelter afforded to the most delicate as well as the most uncommon flower that blossoms in the human mind. In that gay serene and genial climate the muses are still more or less cultivated, though not with the same ardour and pa.s.sion in every age; as appears from the following pa.s.sage translated from a[A] _French_ author, who wrote about the beginning of the present century. "Almost all the arts have in their turns experienced that disgust and love of change which is natural to mankind. But I don't know that any one of them has felt it more than Poetry; which in some ages has been exalted to a triumphal heighth, in others neglected, discouraged and despised. About sixty years ago, under the administration of one of the greatest geniuses that ever _France_ produced, poetry found itself amongst us at its highest pitch of glory. Those who cultivated the muses were regarded with particular favour: this art was the road to fortune and dignified stations. But in these days this ardour seems to be considerably abated. We do not appear to be extremely sensible to poetical merit, &c."

[Footnote A: Defense de la Poesie; par M. l'Abbe _Messieu. Memoires de Literature, Tome_ 2de.]

THE TASTE OF THE PRESENT AGE.

Amongst many other distinguis.h.i.+ng marks of a stupid age, a bad crop of men, I have been told that the taste in writing was never so false as at present. If it is really so, it may perhaps be owing to a prodigious swarm of insipid trashy writers: amongst whom there are some who pretend to dictate to the public as critics, though they hardly ever fail to be mistaken. But their dogmatic impudence, and something like a scientific air of talking the most palpable nonsense, imposes upon great numbers of people, who really possess a considerable share of natural Taste; of which at the same time they are so little conscious as to suffer themselves pa.s.sively to be misled by those blundering guides.

A Taste worth cultivating is to be improved and preserved by reading _only_ the best writers. But whoever, after perusing a satire of Horace, even in the dullest English translation, can relish the stupid abuse of a blackguard rhymster, may as well indulge the natural depravity of his Taste, and riot for life upon distiller's grains.

But the Taste in writing is not, cannot be worse, than it is in music, as well as in all theatrical entertainments. In architecture indeed there are some elegant and magnificent works arising, at a very proper time to restore the nation to some credit with its neighbours in this article; after its having been exposed to such repeated disgraces by a triumvirate of awkward clumsey piles, that are not ashamed to shew their stupid heads in the neighbourhood of Whitehall: and one more, that ought to be demolished; if it was for no other reason but to restore the view of an elegant church, which has now for many years been buried alive behind the Mansion-house.

It is indeed some comfort, that while Taste and Genius happen to be very false and impotent in most of the fine arts, they are not so in all. The arts of Gardening particularly, and the elegant plan of a farm, have of late years displayed themselves in a few spots to greater advantage in England, than perhaps ever before in any part of Europe. This is indeed very far from being universal; and some gardens, admired and celebrated still, are so smoothly regular, so over-planted, and so crowded with affected, impertinent, ridiculous ornaments of temples, ruins, pyramids, obelisks, statues, and a thousand other contemptible whims, that a continuation of the same ground in its rude natural state, is infinitely more delightful. You must often have seen fine situations ruined with costly pretences to _improvement_. The most n.o.ble and romantic situation of any gardens I have seen, is near Chepstow; and the gentleman who possesses that delightful spot, has shewn great judgment and a true taste, in meddling so little with Nature where she wanted so little help.

This is one happy instance of an admirable situation, where Nature is modestly and judiciously improved, not hurt, by art. An opposite instance of what art, skill, and taste may produce, without any particular advantages of ground or situation, is most agreeably displayed in the royal gardens at Kew. There you find an extent of flat ground, so easily, agreeably, and unaffectedly broken, that you would think it impossible to alter it but to the worse. To pa.s.s without any notice the agreeable and the elegant pieces of architecture, which without crowding adorn those delightful gardens; perhaps there is not a physick garden in Europe where any botanist can be more agreeably entertained, as to the variety of curious plants.

But there is something new as far as I know, and particularly ingenious here in the disposition and management of them. Those that naturally delight in the rocks, and the dry hungry soil, are here planted upon ridges of artificial rock-work; where they shew all the luxuriance of vegetation that they could amongst the Alps, the Pyrenees or the Andes. While a very different tribe, the Aquatics, display themselves in a large cistern, where they are constantly supplied with their best and most natural nourishment the rain water, conveyed to them from the eves of the richest greenhouse I have ever seen.

William Andrews Clark Memorial Library: University of California

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