Essays on Taste Part 1

Essays on Taste.

by John Gilbert Cooper.

INTRODUCTION

The essays on taste taken from the work of John Gilbert Cooper and John Armstrong and reprinted in this issue are of interest and value to the student of the eighteenth century because they typify the s.h.i.+fting att.i.tudes toward taste held by most mid-century poets and critics. Cooper, who accepts the Shaftesbury-Hutchesonian thesis of the internal sense, emphasizes the personal, ecstatic effect of taste.

Armstrong, while accepting the rationalist notions of clarity and simplicity, attacks methodized rules and urges reliance on individuality.

Following Shaftesbury and Hutcheson closely, Cooper treats taste as an immediate, prerational response of an internal sense to the proportion and harmony in nature, a response from an internal harmony of the senses, imagination, and understanding to a similar harmony in external nature. Cooper defines the effect of good taste as a "Glow of Pleasure which thrills thro' our whole Frame." This "Glow" is characterized by high emotional sensibility, and it thus minimizes the pa.s.sivity which Hutcheson attributes to the internal sense.

Armstrong's sources are more eclectic than Cooper's. Armstrong shows similarities to Pope in his rationalism, to Dennis in his treatment of poetry as an expression of the pa.s.sions, and to Hutcheson in his emphasis on benevolence and the psychological basis of perception.

But to these views, he frequently adds personal eccentricities. For example, _Taste: An Epistle to a Young Critic_ reveals its Popean descent in its tone and form; however, its gastronomic ending displays Armstrong's interest, as a physician, in the relation of diet to literary taste. If Armstrong's boast that "I'm a shrewd observer, and will guess What books you doat on from your fav'rite mess," is a personal eccentricity, his attack on false criticism and his exhortation to judge for oneself are typical harbingers of late eighteenth-century individualism and confidence in the "natural" man.

An honest farmer, or shepherd [writes Armstrong in "Of Taste"], 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.[1]

[Footnote 1: John Armstrong, _Miscellanies_ (London, 1770), II, 137.]

Cooper and Armstrong both hold a historically intermediate position in their att.i.tudes toward taste, accepting early eighteenth-century a.s.sumptions and balancing them with late eighteenth-century emphases.

Neither of them abandons the moral a.s.sumption of art which, as Armstrong explains it, is a belief in "a standard of right and wrong in the nature of things, of beauty and deformity, both in the natural and moral world."[2] Cooper, who defines taste as a thrilling response to art, falls back upon Hutcheson in minimizing the importance of art and making it secondary to moral knowledge. Armstrong, while describing taste as the sensitive discrimination of degrees of beauty and deformity, bases this discrimination not on artistic, but on moral qualities.

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, II, 134.]

The complete transition from cla.s.sic to romantic premises of taste is characterized by the separation of art from morals. This step neither Cooper nor Armstrong takes. But they do exhibit tendencies which explain how the s.h.i.+ft was made possible. Both writers insist on a felt response to a work of art. Cooper emphasizes that this response must be to the whole work. This a.s.sumption implies that a work of art is an ent.i.ty complete in itself; it makes possible the argument that art conveys artistic, not moral knowledge. Cooper, by stressing sensibility as an effect of taste, suggests the Wordsworthian notion that the poet is more sensitive than other people.

Armstrong, in addition to his hostility to formal criticism and his confidence in the natural man, reveals three other tendencies which later eighteenth-century critics elaborated. Like Edward Young in his _Conjectures on Original Composition_, 1759, Armstrong opposes slavish imitation of ancient models and declares that the writer should "catch their graces without affecting it [them]" so that his "own original characteristical manner will still distinguish itself."[3] Armstrong emphasizes exquisiteness of perception as the basis for taste: the more exquisite the mind, the more is it able to discriminate among the various degrees of the beautiful and the deformed. Although later critics repudiate Armstrong's moral discrimination, they transform it into a refined discrimination of aesthetic qualities. Finally, by suggesting that the man of genius differs from the man of taste by his ability to handle a medium, Armstrong implies the possibility of a technical criticism in terms of the writer's craft, apart from moral judgment.

[Footnote 3: _Ibid._, II, 168.]

Although the works of Cooper and Armstrong elicited contrasting popular reactions--_Letters concerning Taste_ running into four editions from 1755 to 1771 and Armstrong's writings, with the exception of _The Art of Preserving Health_, never winning much public favor--neither writer exerted a strong critical influence. Cooper did not rea.s.sess or change significantly the a.s.sumptions of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. His work was primarily a popularization of their ideas, and, in its enthusiastic language, its emphasis on sensibility, and its epistolary form, it seems directed at flattering a female audience. Armstrong's remarks on taste, written in imitation of the simplicity and clarity of the rational tradition, are personal a.s.sertions and opinions rather than well-defined or clearly thought-out critical positions. They are random thoughts rather than a coherent critical theory.

The significance of Cooper and Armstrong rests, therefore, on certain representative att.i.tudes toward taste which exhibit the change "from cla.s.sic to romantic." On the one hand, they accept the moral postulates of art, and, on the other, they emphasize the emotional basis of taste. Cooper treats art as a secondary form of knowledge, yet emphasizes the thrill that art gives. Armstrong accepts the standards of clarity and simplicity, while emphasizing the individuality of response and the need for discriminating particular, rather than general, qualities. Though Cooper and Armstrong fail to revaluate the traditions they accept, they exemplify trends which led others to perform this revaluation and to transform the moral a.s.sumptions into aesthetic criteria.

Bibliographical Note

The two reprints from the twenty letters of John Gilbert Cooper's _Letters concerning Taste. To which are added Essays on similar and other Subjects_ are from the third edition, dated 1757; the first edition was published in 1755 as _Letters concerning Taste_.

The selections by John Armstrong are taken from the two-volume _Miscellanies_ published in 1770. "The Taste of the Present Age"

received its first publication in this edition, but the other prose had previously been published in 1758 under the pseudonym of Launcelot Temple in the first volume of _Sketches: or Essays on Various Subjects_. The poem _Taste: An Epistle to a Young Critic_ was first published in 1753.

Ralph Cohen

LETTERS CONCERNING TASTE.

LETTER I.

To EUPHEMIUS.

Whence comes it, EUPHEMIUS, that you, who are _feelingly_ alive to each fine Sensation that Beauty or Harmony gives the Soul, should so often a.s.sert, contrary to what you daily experience, _that_ TASTE _is governed by Caprice, and that_ BEAUTY _is reducible to no Criterion?_ I am afraid your Generosity in this Instance is greater than your Sincerity, and that you are willing to compliment the circle of your Friends, in giving up by this Concession that envied Superiority you might claim over them, should it be acknowledged that those uncommon Emotions of Pleasure, which arise in your Breast upon the Observation of moral or natural Elegance, were caused by a more ready and intimate Perception of that universal TRUTH, which the all-perfect CREATOR of this harmonious System ordained to be the VENUS of every Object, whether in the Material World; in the imitative Arts; or in living Characters and Manners. How irreconcileable are your Doctrines to the Example you afford us! However, since you press me to justify your Practice against your Declarations, by giving a Definition of what is meant by TASTE, I shall not avoid the invidious Office of pointing out your superior Excellence to others, by proving that TRUTH and BEAUTY are coincident, and that the warmest Admirers of these CELESTIAL TWINS, have consequently Souls more nearly allied to aetherial Spirits of a higher Order. The effect of a _good_ TASTE is that instantaneous Glow of Pleasure which thrills thro' our whole Frame, and seizes upon the Applause of the Heart, before the intellectual Power, Reason, can descend from the Throne of the Mind to ratify it's Approbation, either when we receive into the Soul beautiful Images thro' the Organs of bodily Senses; or the Decorum of an amiable Character thro' the Faculties of moral Perception; or when we recall, by the imitative Arts, both of them thro' the intermediate Power of the Imagination.

Nor is this delightful and immediate Sensation to be excited in an undistempered Soul, but by a Chain of Truths, dependent upon one another till they terminate in the hand of the Divine COMPOSER of the whole. Let us cast our Eyes first upon the Objects of the Material World. A rural Prospect upon the very first Glance yields a grateful Emotion in the Breast, when in a Variety of Scenes there arises from the whole ONE Order, whose different Parts will be found, by the critical Eye of Contemplation, to relate mutually to one another, and each examined apart, to be productive of the Necessaries, the Conveniencies, and Emoluments of Life. Suppose you was to behold from an Eminence, thro' a small range of Mountains covered with Woods, several little Streams gus.h.i.+ng out of Rocks, some gently trickling over Pebbles, others tumbling from a Precipice, and a few gliding smoothly in Willow-shaded Rivulets thro green Meadows, till their tributary Waters are all collected by some River G.o.d of a larger Urn, who at some few Miles distance is lost in the Ocean, which heaves it's broad Bosom to the Sight, and ends the Prospect with an immense Expanse of Waters. Tell me, EUPHEMIUS, would not such a Scene captivate the Heart even before the intellectual Powers discover Minerals in the Mountains; future Navies in the Woods; Civil and Military Architecture in the Rocks; healing Qualities in the smaller Streams; Fertility, that the larger Waters distribute along their serpentising Banks; Herbage for Cattle in the Meadows; and lastly, the more easy Opportunities the River affords us to convey to other Climates the Superfluities of our own, for which the Ocean brings us back in Exchange what we stand in need of from theirs. Now to heighten this beautiful Landscape, let us throw in Corn Fields, here and there a Country Seat, and, at proper Distances, small Hamlets, together with Spires and Towers, as MILTON describes them,

"bosom'd high in tufted Trees."

Does not an additional Rapture flow in from this Adjunct, of which Reason will afterwards discover the latent Cause in the same manner as before. Your favourite Architecture will not fail to afford less remarkable Instances, that Truth, Beauty, and Utility are inseparable.

You very well know that every Rule, Canon, and Proportion in building did not arise from the capricious Invention of Man, but from the unerring Dictates of Nature, and that even what are now the ornamental Parts of an Edifice, originally were created by Necessity; and are still displeasing to the Sight, when they are disobedient, if I may use that moral Expression, to the Order, which Nature, whose Laws cannot be repealed, first gave to supply that Necessity. Here I appeal to your own Breast, and let me continue the Appeal by asking you concerning another Science a.n.a.logous to this, which is founded upon as invariable Principles: I mean the Science of living well, in which you are as happily learned as in the former. Say then, has not every amiable Character, with which you have been enamoured, been proved by a cool Examination to contain a _beautiful_ Proportion, in the Point it was placed in, relative to Society? And what is it that const.i.tutes Moral Deformity, or what we call Vice, but the Disproportion which any Agent occasions, in the Fabric of Civil Community, by a Non-compliance to the general _Order_ which should prevail in it?

As the Arts of Painting, Sculpture, and Poetry are imitative of these, their Excellence, as ARISTOTLE observes, consists in Faithfulness to their Original: nor have they any _primary_ Beauty in themselves, but derive their shadowy Existence in a mimetic Transcript from Objects in the Material World, or from Pa.s.sions, Characters, and Manners.

Nevertheless that _internal Sense_ we call TASTE (which is a Herald for the whole human System, in it's three different Parts, the refined Faculties of Perception, the gross Organs of Sense, and the intermediate Powers of Imagination) has as quick a Feeling of this secondary Excellence of the Arts, as for the primary Graces; and seizes the Heart with Rapture long before the Senses, and Reason in Conjunction, can _prove_ this Beauty by collating the Imitations with their Originals.

If it should be asked _why_ external Objects affect the human Breast in this Manner, I would answer, that the ALMIGHTY has in this, as well as in all his other Works, out of his abundant Goodness and Love to his Creatures, so _attuned_ our Minds to Truth, that all Beauty from without should make a responsive Harmony vibrate within. But should any of those more curious Gentlemen, who busy themselves With Enquiries into Matters, which the Deity, for Reasons known only to himself, has placed above our limited Capacities, demand _how_ he has so formed us, I should refer them, with proper Contempt, to their more aged Brethren, who may justly in Derision be stiled _the Philosophers of ultimate Causes_. To you, my dear Friend, whose truly philosophical and religious Taste concludes that whatever G.o.d ordains is right, it is sufficient to have proved that _Truth_ is the Cause of all _Beauty_, and that Truth flows from the Fountain of all Perfection, in whose unfathomable Depth finite Thought should never venture with any other Intention than to wonder and adore. But I find I have been imperceptibly led on from Thought to Thought, not only to trespa.s.s upon the common Stile of a Letter, by these abstruse Reasonings and religious Conclusions, but upon the ordinary length of one likewise; therefore shall conclude by complimenting my own Taste in Characters, when I a.s.sure you that I am,

_Your most affectionate Friend_, &c.

LETTER II.

To the SAME.

It gave me no small Pleasure to find, by your Answer to my last Letter, that you now allow BEAUTY to be the Daughter of TRUTH; and I in my turn will make a Concession to you, by confessing that BEAUTY herself may have _acquired_ Charms, but then they are altogether such as are consistent with her divine Extraction. What you observe is very true, that the human Form (the most glorious Object, as you are pleased to call it, in the Creation) let it be made with the most accurate Symmetry and Proportion, may receive _additional_ Charms from Education, and steal more subtily upon the Soul of the Beholder from some advent.i.tious Circ.u.mstances of easy Att.i.tudes or Motion, and an undefineable Sweetness of Countenance, which an habitual Commerce with the more refined Part of Mankind superadds to the Work of Nature. This the ancient _Grecian_ Artists would have represented mythologically in Painting by the GRACES crowning VENUS. We find how much LELY has availed himself in his shadowy Creations of transcribing from Life this advent.i.tious Charm into all his Portraits. I mean, when he _stole_ upon his _animated Canvas_, as POPE poetically expresses it,

"The sleepy Eye that spoke the melting Soul."

You will ask me, perhaps, how I can prove any Alliance in this particular Circ.u.mstance of a single Feature to Truth; Or rather triumphantly push the Argument farther, and say, Is not this additional Charm, as you call it, inconsistent with the Divine Original of Beauty, since it deadens the fiery l.u.s.tre of that penetrating Organ? I chuse to draw my Answer from the Schools of the antient ETHOGRAPHI, who by their enchanting Art so happily conveyed, thro' the Sight, the Lessons of Moral Philosophy. These Sages would have told you, that our Souls are attuned to one another, like the Strings of musical Instruments, and that the Chord of one being struck, the _Unison_ of another, tho' untouched, will vibrate to it.

The Pa.s.sions therefore of the human Heart, expressed either in the living Countenance, or the mimetic Strokes of Art, will affect the Soul of the Beholder with a similar and responsive Disposition. What wonder then is it that Beauty, borrowing thus the Look of softening Love, whose Power can lull the most watchful of the Senses, should cast that sweet _Nepenthe_ upon our Hearts, and enchant our corresponding Thoughts to rest in the Embraces of Desire? Sure then I am, that you will always allow Love to be the Source and End of our Being, and consequently consistent with Truth. It is the Superaddition of such Charms to Proportion, which is called _Taste_ in Musick, Painting, Poetry, Sculpture, Gardening and Architecture. By which is generally meant that happy a.s.semblage which excites in our Minds, by a.n.a.logy, some pleasurable Image. Thus, for Instance, even the Ruins of an old Castle properly disposed, or the Simplicity of a rough hewn Hermitage in a Rock, enliven a Prospect, by recalling the Moral Images of _Valor_ and _Wisdom_; and I believe no Man will contend, that Valor exerted in the Defence of one's Country, or Wisdom contemplating in Retirement for the Welfare of Mankind, are not truly amiable Images, belonging to the Divine Family of Truth. I think I have now reconciled our two favorite Opinions, by proving that these _additional_ Charms, if they must be called so, have their Origin in Nature as much as Proportion itself.--I am very glad the Prints I sent afforded you so much Pleasure, not only as I wish every thing which comes from me may be favorably received by you, but as they are likewise a Confirmation of my Arguments; for the Man who drew them is no very great Artist, but being a faithful Disciple of Nature, having delineated every Object in a _Camera Obscura_, he has not failed of gaining the uncontested Applause, which the Followers of that unerring Mistress will ever receive from Mankind. My EUDOCIA calls me to administer with her Comfort to a little fatherless Family in the District of our Hamlet, therefore must conclude myself,

_Your sincere Friend_, &c.

LETTER

TASTE:

AN

EPISTLE

TO A

YOUNG CRITIC.