Essays on Taste | Page 2

be to the whole work. This assumption implies that a work of art is an
entity 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 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
ætherial Spirits of a