Book Description

Excerpt from Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres But although taste be ultimately founded on sensibility, it must not be considered as instinctive sensibility alone. 'reason and good sense, as I before hinted, have so extensive an influ ence on all the operations and decisions of taste, that a thorough good taste may well be considered as a power compounded of natural sensibility to beauty, and of improved understanding. In order to be satisfied of this, let us 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. The pleasure we receive from such imitations or repro scutations 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, such a poem as the feneid, a great part of our pleasure arises from the plan or story being well conducted, and all the parts joined together with probability and due connexion; from the characters being taken from nature, the sentiments being suited to the characters, and the style to the sentiments. The pleasure which arises 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 that reason enables us to discover such propriety in the conduct, the greater will be our pleasure. We are pleased, through our natural sense of beauty. Reason shows us why and upon what grounds we are pleased. Wherever, in works of taste, any resemblance to nature is aimed at; wherever there is any reference of parts to a whole, or of means to an end, as there is indeed in almost every writing and discourse there the understanding must always have a great part to act. Here then is a wide field for reason's exerting its powers in relation to the objects of taste, particularly with respect to composition, and works of genius; and hence arises a second and a very considerable source of the improvement of taste. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.