Essays on Taste | Page 2

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 reassess or change significantly the assumptions 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 assertions 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 attitudes toward taste which exhibit the change "from classic 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 assumptions 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 assert, 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 ?therial 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