tion when applied to the beauty of objects, or to any of thofe qualities that are perceived by a good taste. "But though fome of the qualities that please a good tafte refemble the fecondary qualities of body, and therefore may be called occult qualities, as we only feel their effect, and have no more knowledge of the caufe, but that it is fomething which is adapted by nature to produce that effect; this is not always the cafe.

"Our judgment of beauty is in many cafes more enlightened. A work of art may appear beautiful to the most ignorant, even to a child. It pleases, but he knows not why. To one who understands it perfectly, and perceives how every part is fitted with exact judgment to its end, the beauty is not myfterious; it is perfectly comprehended; and he knows wherein it confifts, as well as how it affects him.

2. We may obferve, that, though all the taffes we perceive by the palate are either agreeable, or difagreeable, or indifferent; yet, among those that are agreeable, there is great diverfity, not in degree only, but in kind. And as we have not generical names for all the different kinds of tatte, we diftinguish them by the bodies in which they are found.

"In like manner, all the objects of our internal tafte are either beautiful, or difagreeable, or indifferent; yet of beauty there is a great diverfity, not only of degree, but of kind: the beauty of a demontiration, the beauty of a poem, the beauty of a palace, the beauty of a piece of mufic, the beauty of a fine woman, and many more that might be named, are different kinds of beauty; and we have no names to diftinguifh

them but the names of the different objects to which they belong.

"As there is fuch diverfity in the kinds of beauty as well as in the degrees, we need not think it ftrange that philofophers have gone into different fyftems in analyfing it, and enumerating its fimple ingredients. They have made many juft obfervations on the fubject; but, from the love of fimplicity, have reduced it to fewer principles than the nature of the thing will permit, having had in their eye fome parti cular kinds of beauty, while they overlooked others.

"There are moral beauties as well as natural; beauties in the objects of fenfe, and in intellectual objects; in the works of men, and in the works of God; in things inanimate, in brute animals, and in rational beings; in the conftitution of the body of man, and in the confitution of his mind. There is no real excellence which has not its beauty to a difcerning eye, when placed in a proper point of view; and it is as difficult to enumerate the ingredients of beauty as the ingredients of real excellence.

"3. The taste of the palate may be accounted most just and perfect, when we relifh the things that are fit for the nourishment of the body, and are difgufted with things of a contrary nature. The manifeft intention of nature in giving us this fenfe, is, that we may difcern what it is fit for us to eat and to drink, and what it is not. Brute animals are directed in the choice of their food merely by their tafte. Led by this guide, they chufe the food that nature intended for them, and feldom make mistakes, unlefs they be pinched by hunger, or deceived by artificial compofitions. In infants likewife the talte is commonly found

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and

tred; if he was drunk, or married; he spoke a fentiment: if a lady was angry, or pleafed; in love, or out of it; a prude, or a coquet; make room for a fentiment! If a fervant girl was chid, or received a prefent from her mistrefs; if a valet received a purfe, or a horfewhipping; good heavens, what a fine fentiiment!

"This fault I fay was infinitely more abfurd than that of Congreve; for a peasant may blunder on wit, to whofe mind fentiment is totally heterogeneous. Betides, Congreve's wit is all his own; whereas moit of the faid fentiments may be found in the Proverbs of Solomon.

"No wonder then this way of writing was foon abandoned even by him who was its chief leader. Goldsmith in vain tried to stem the torrent by oppofing a barrier of low humour, and dullness and abfurdity, more dull and abfurd than English fentimental comedy itfelf.

"It is very much to the credit of that excellent writer Mr. Colman, that, while other dramatifts were loft in the fashion of fentiment, his comedies always prefent the happieft mediums of nature; without either affectation of fentiment, or affectation of wit. That the able tranflator of Terence fhould yet have fufficient force of mind to keep his own pieces clear of the declamatory dulnefs of that ancient, is certainly a matter deferving of much applaufe. The Jealous Wife, and the Clandestine Marriage, with others of his numerous dramas, may be mentioned as the most perfect models of comedy we have to all the other requifites of fine comic writing they always add just as much fentiment and wit as does them good. This happy hedium is the most difficult to hit in all com

pofition, and most declares the hand of a master.

"By the School for Scandal the ftyle of Congreve was again brought into fabion; and fentiment made way for wit, and delicate humour. That piece has indeed the beauties of Congreve's comedies, without their faults: its plot is deeply enough perplexed, without forcing one to labour to unravel it; its incidents fufficient, without being too numerous; its wit pure; its fituations truly dramatic. The characers however are not quite fo strong as Congreve's; which may be regarded as the principal fault of this excellent piece. Leffer faults are Charles's fometimes blundering upon fentiments; nay fometimes upon what are the worst of all sentiments, fuch as are of dangerous tendency, as when Rowley advifes him to pay his debts, before he makes a very liberal prefent, and fo to act as an honest man ere he acts as a generous one.

"Rowley. Ah, fir, I wish you would remember the proverb——

"Charles. Be juft before you are generous.-Why fo I would if I could, but Juftice is an old lame hobbling beldame, and I can't get her to keep pace with Generosity for the foul of me."

"This fentiment, than which nothing can be more falfe and immoral, is always received by the filly audience with loud applaufe, whereas no reprobation can be too fevere for it. A leffer blemish lies in the verfes tagged to the end of the play, in which one of the cha racters addreffes the audience. The verfes are an abfurdity, the addrefs a fill greater; for the audience is by no good actor fuppofed to be prefent: and any circumstance that contributes to destroy the apparent

reality

this, we shall fee that it is as eafy to account for the variety of taftes, though there be in nature a standard of true beauty, and confequent. ly of good tafte; as it is to account for the variety and contrariety of opinions, though there be in nature a ftandard of truth, and confequently of right judgment.

6. Nay, if we speak accurately and strictly, we fhall find, that, in every operation of tafle, there is judgment implied.

"When a man pronounces a poem or a palace to be beautiful, he affirms fomething of that poem or thaf palace; and every afhrmation or denial expreffes judgment. For we cannot better define judgment, than by faying that it is an affirmation or denial of one thing concerning another. I had occation to fhow, when treating of judgment, that it is implied in every perception of our external fenfes. There is an immediate conviction and belief of the existence of the quality perceived, whether it be colour, or found, or figure; and the fame thing holds in the perception of beauty or deformity.

"If it be faid that the perception of beauty is merely a feeling in the mind that perceives, with o any belief of excellence in the object, the neceffary confequence of this opinion is, that when I fay Virgil's Georgics is a beautiful poem, I mean not to fay any thing of the poem, but only fomething concerning myfelf and my feelings. Why fhould I use a language that expreffes the contrary of what I

mean?

"My language, according to the neceffary rules of conftruction, can bear no other meaning but this, that there is fomething in the poem, and not in me, which I call beauty. Even those who hold beauty to be

merely a feeling in the perfon that perceives it, find themselves under a neceflity of expreffing themselves, as if beauty were folely a quality of the object, and not of the percipient.

"No reafon can be given why all mankind fhould exprefs themfelves thus, but that they believe what they fay. It is therefore contrary to the univerfal fenfe of man-" kind, expreffed by their language, that beauty is not really in the object, but is merely a feeling in the perfon who is faid to perceive it. Philofophers fhould be very cautious in oppofing the common fenteTM of mankind; for, when they do, they rarely mifs going wrong.

"Our judgment of beauty is not indeed a dry and unaffecting judg ment, like that of a mathematical or metaphyfical truth. By the conftitution of our nature, it is accompanied with an agreeable feeling or emotion, for which we have no other name but the fenfe of beauty. This fenfe of beauty, like the perceptions of our other fenfes, implies not only a feeling, but an opinion of fome quality in the object which occafions that feeling.

"In objects that pleafe the tafte, we always judge that there is fome real excellence, fome fuperiority to thofe that do not pleafe. In fome cafes, that fuperior excellence is diftinctly perceived, and can be pointed out; in other cafes, we have only a general notion of fome excellence which we cannot defcribe. Beauties of the former kind may be compared to the primary qualities perceived by the external fenfes ; thofe of the latter kind, to the fe'condary.

7. Beauty or deformity in an object, refults from its nature or ftructure. To perceive the beauty, therefore, we must perceive the na

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velty, is the fuperlative qualification of poetry, and nothing can contribute more to procure it permanent admiration. Yet invention itself is inferior to strong sense even in poetry; for there are poems in which the invention is rich, yet difgufts by its futility; not being conducted by that acer animi vis, that keen force of mind, which always accompanies true genius.

"If good fenfe is therefore a praife fuperior to invention itself in poetry, we may with great fafety pronounce it one of the very firit qualities that enfures applaufe to compofition.

A beautiful work of genius may be aptly compared to a beautiful woman. Good fenfe may be called its health, without which it cannot live, charming as its other powers may be. But though a woman has good health, it does not follow that flie is fair; nay we often applaud a morbidezza, or an appearance of fickly, delicacy, as an improver of female beauty; and in this the comparison fails. A work, as well as its prefent parallel, muft have the bloom and the features of beauty, with grace and elegance in its motions, to attract admiration. The bloom and fine features, the grace and elegance, of a work confift in its ftyle; which is the part that is most recommendatory of it, as outward beauty and grace are of a woman confidered as an object of fight.

"The bloom and the features of compofition lie in the verbage and figures of its ftyle; the grace in the manner and movement of that Style.

"A work, immoral and unwife, has yet been found to live by its ftyle, in fpite of thefe defects. Style is therefore a quality of writing equal, if not fuperior, to good fenfe: for the latter without the former will by no means preferve a work, though the reverfe of the rule is true. Indeed a fine ftyle is com

only joined with good fenfe; both being the offspring of the fame luminous mind."

"Can a work live long which is defective in ftyle? Impoffible. Homer's style is the richest in the Greek language. Style has preferved He rodotus in fpite of his abfurdities. Every ancient, who has reached us, has an eminent ftyle in his respective walk and manner. Style has faved all the Latin writers, who are only good imitators of the Greeks. Terence is only the tranflator of Menander; Salluft an imitator of Thucydides; Horace is an imitator and almost a tranflator in all his odes, as we may boldly pronounce on comparing them with fuch very minute fragments of Grecian lyric poetry as have reached us. Yet it was he who exclaimed

O imitatores fervum pecus!

Style has faved Virgil entirely, who has not the most distant pretence to any other attribute of a poet.

"Good fenfe I have called the health of a work, without which it cannot live; but a work may live without much applaufe: and the first quality of writing that attracts univerfal and permanent fame was the fubject of the prefent difcuf fion. This we have found to be style."

OBSER

UR author is faid to be the first Englishman, who, after the restoration of letters, wrote Latin verfes with claffic elegance. But we muft at least except fome of the hendecafyllables and epigrams of Leland, one of our first literary reformers, from this hafty determi

nation.

"In the Elegies, Ovid was profeffedly Milton's model for language and verfification. They are not, however, a perpetual and uniform tiffue of Ovidian phrafeology. With Ovid in view, he has an original manner and character of his own, which exhibit a remarkable perfpicuity of contexture, a native facility and fluency. Nor does his obfervation of Roman models opprefs or destroy our great poet's inherent powers of invention and fentiment. I value these pieces as much for their fancy and genius, as for their ftyle and expreffion.

"That Ovid among the Latin poets was Milton's favourite, appears not only from his elegiac but his hexametric poetry. The verfification of our author's hexameters has yet a different ftructure from that of the Metamorphofes : Milton's is more clear, intelligible, and flowing; lefs defultory, lefs familiar, and lefs embarraffed with a frequent recurrence of periods. Ovid is at once rapid and abrupt. He wants dignity: he has too much converfation in his manner of telling a story. Prolixity of paragraph, and length of fentence, are peculiar to Milton. This is feen, not only in fome of his exordial invocations in the Paradife Loft, and in many

of the religious addreffes of a like caft in the profe-works, but in his long verfe. It is to be wifhed that in his Latin compofitions of all forts, he had been more attentive to the fimplicity of Lucretius, Vir gil, and Tibullus.

"Dr. Johnfon prefers the Latin poetry of May and Cowley to that of Milton, and thinks May to be the first of the three. May is certainly fonorous dactylist, and was fufficiently accomplished in poetical declamation for the continuation of Lucan's Pharfalia. But May is fcarcely an author in point. His skill is in parody; and he was confined to the peculiarities of an archetype, which, it may be prefumed, he thought excellent. As to Cowley, when compared with Milton, the fame critic obferves, "Milton is generally content to exprefs the thoughts of the ancients in their language: Cowley, with. out much lofs of purity or elegance, accommodates the diction of Rome to his own conceptions. The advantage feems to lie on the fide of Cowley." But what are these con ceptions? Metaphyfical conceits, all the unnatural extravagancies of his English poetry; fuch as will not bear to be clothed in the Latin language, much lefs are capable of admitting any degree of pure La. tinity. I will give a few inftances, out of a great multitude, from the Davideis.

Hic fociatorum facra conftellatio vatum, Quos felix virtus evexit ad æthera, nubes

Luxuriæ fupra, tempestatesque laborum. Again,

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Temporis