the Augustan age, of whom we know nothing, merely because they were the disciples of false taste, and because their works have consequently never reached us. And how many writers are there at present, who will be consigned to oblivion before the expiration of the present century. Posterity will therefore be ignorant of the false taste that prevails at present. They will judge of us, as we judge of former ages, only by those writers who have attained to excellence; and they will conclude, that an age which produced men of such transcendent powers of mind, must be an age pre-eminently blessed with taste and genius. The taste of an age is not judged of by the many, but by the few. The Dunciad tribe will glide into oblivion, and eternal silence will shed its Lethean influence over their forgotten shades.

CHAP. V.

On the Influence of Habit, in Matters of Taste.

THE influence of what is called habit, but which will hereafter appear to be the effect of comparison, in determining and modifying the character of taste, is at once so powerful, and so obviously apparent, that it has created a scepticism on the subject, which has not merely extended to those who have never given themselves those habits of comparison and investigation, which enable us to discriminate the beauties of nature and of art, but has even reached to those who have made taste the subject of their most serious and critical attention. To remove this scepticism, and to prove that it has originated in a mistaken view of the true nature and principles of taste, is an undertaking of no ordinary nature. I therefore engage in it, though without any doubt on my own part, as to the fixed and immutable nature of taste, yet with some doubts of being able to convert others to the same creed, feeling, as I do, how difficult it is to remove prejudices that

seem to be founded in the very nature and constitution of man. We are told that there is nothing fixed in the laws of taste, that every thing is determined by habit, and that we are so much under the influence of this habit, that what serves for a model of beauty in one country, will create the most marked disgust and aversion in another. We are told that the Indians of North America make beauty consist in a broad flat face, small eyes, high cheek-bones, three or four black lines across each cheek, a low forehead, a large broad chin, a clumsy hook-nose, a tawny hide, and breasts hanging down to the belt. We are told that the same people are so far from thinking the whiteness of an European skin at all conducive to beauty, that it only excites in them the disgusting idea of dead flesh, sodden in water, till all the blood and juices are extracted*. Buffon relates many opinions on this subject in his Natural History, which tend to shew that there is nothing fixed in our ideas of beauty; and the fact seems to be so well substantiated, that it sets all doubt at rest on the subject. Are we then to conclude, from the endless variety of tastes that prevail in different ages, and in different nations, that there are no fixed

* Journey from Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean, &c. p. 88 and 122.

qualities in objects better calculated to affect us than others, with that pleasing emotion which results from real or imaginary beauty? Is it certain, that all the qualities of an object are equally beautiful, and that though some qualities fail of exciting this pleasing emotion in some people, they never fail of exciting it in others? These conclusions would seem obvious, from the varieties of taste that obtain in different nations; and they seem to confirm that scepticism which denies any principles to be fixed or certain in the laws of taste. There appears, therefore, to be very considerable difficulty in removing this scepticism; because it seems to be sanctioned by the most warrantable of all prejudices, the natural, unsophisticated biasses and propensities of man. Strong, however, as these objections are to the immutability of the principles of taste, they are rendered still more formidable by the views in which they have been contemplated by ingenious writers, and the arguments which they have advanced in their defence; and as I neither wish to impose upon myself, nor upon my readers, by answering only such objections to the fixed principles of taste as I choose to make myself, I will first quote the arguments that have been advanced on the sceptical side of the question, and afterwards inquire, whether they possess that evidence that must necessarily command our

ássent to the theory which they attempt to establish. He who replies only to such objections against his own creed as he is able to discover himself, can seldom assure himself that the system which he adopts is not as defective as that which he endeavours to subvert, because he is never so ingenious in detecting and perceiving every principle of reasoning that stands opposed to his own theory, and supports the opposite one, as he who is already a convert to the latter. In matters of this kind, we are at once as blind and as clear-sighted as he who sees the mote in another man's eye, and cannot see the beam in his own.

I believe Mandeville, who published his "Fable of the Bees," in 1732, was the first English writer of note, who endeavoured to shew, that there were no fixed qualities belonging to beauty, nor consequently to taste, but what resulted from habit. Mandeville was a writer of considerable talent, but he was as loose and unfixed in his moral creed, as he was in his ideas of the principles of beauty: for he endeavours to vindicate crimes in the above work, because they serve to establish a good legislation. Many other writers, since the time of Mandeville, adopted his opinions; but in all they have written on the subject, they have added little that renders their scepticism more formidable than he had left it, till Mr. Hume