A full and confiftent evidence of defign, especially if the defign be attended with an important effect, gives the idea of beauty: thus a fhip under fail, a greyhound, a well. haped horfe, are beautiful, because they difplay with ease a great defign. Birds and beafts of prey, completely armed for deftruction, are for the fame reafon beautiful, although objects of terror. Where different defigns at a fingle view, appear to concur to one effect, the beauty accumulates; as in the Grecian architecture: where different defigns, leading to different effects, unite in the fame whole, they caufe confufion, and diminish the idea of beauty, as in the Gothic buildings. Upon the fame principle, confufion and diforder are ugly or frightful; the figures made by fpilled liquors are always ugly. Regular figures are handfome; and the circular, the most regular, is the moft beautiful. This regulation holds only where the fublime does not enter; for in that cafe the irregularity and careleffness add to the ideas of power, and raife in proportion our admiration. The confufion in which we fee the flars fcattered over the heavens, and the rude arrangement of mountains, add to their grandeur. A mixture of the fublime aids exceedingly the idea of beauty, and heightens the horrors of diforder and uglinefs. Perfonal beauty is vastly raised by a noble air; on the contrary, the diffolution and ruins of a large city, diftrefs the mind proportionally: but while we mourn over great ruins, at the deftruction of our fpecies, we are also foothed by the generous commiferation we feel in our own breafts, and therefore ruins give us the fame kind of grateful melancholy we feel at a tragedy. Of all the objects of difcord and confufion, no other is fo fhocking as the human foul in madnefs. When we fee the principle of thought and beauty difordered, the horror is too high, like that of a maffacre committed before our eyes, to fuffer the mind to make any reflex act on the god like traces of pity that diflinguifh our fpecies; and we feel no fenfations but thofe of difmay and beauty of colours may perhaps be arranged tinued motion, are ever beautiful. The under this head: colours, like notes of mufic, affect the paffions; red incites anger, black to melancholy; white brings a gen tle joy to the mind; the fofter colours re fresh or relax it. The mixtures and gradations of colours have an effect corre fpondent to the transitions and combinations of founds; but the ftrokes are too tranfient and feeble to become the objects of expreffion. Beauty alfo refults from every difpofition of nature that plainly difcovers her favour and indulgence to us. Thus the fpring feafon, when the weather becomes mild, the verdant fields, trees loaded with fruit or covered with fhade, clear springs, but particularly the human face, where the gen tle paffions are delineated, are beyond expreffion beautiful. On the fame principle, inclement wintry fkies, trees ftripped of their verdure, defert barren lands, and, above all, death, are frightful and shocking. I muft, however, obferve, that I do not by any means fuppofe, that the fentiment of beauty arifes from a reflex confiderate act of the mind, upon the obfervation of the defigns of nature or of art; the fentiment of beauty is instantaneous, and depends upon no prior reflections. All I mean is, that defign and beauty are in an arbitrary manner united together; fo that where we fee the one, whether we reflect on it or no, we perceive the other. I mu further add, that there may be other divifions of beauty eafily difcoverable, which I have not taken notice of. The general fenfe of beauty, as well as of grandeur, feems peculiar to man in the creation. The herd in common with hir. enjoy the gentle breath of spring; they lie down to repofe on the flowery bank, and hear the peaceful humming of the bee; they enjoy the green fields and pastures: but we have reafon to think, that it is man only who fees the image of beauty over the happy profpect, and rejoices at it; that it is hid from the brute creation, and depends not upon fenfe, but on the intelligent mind. We have just taken a tranfient view of the principal departments of taste; let us now, madam, make a few general reflections upon our fubject. Uber $228. Senfe, Tafte, and Genius diftinguifend The human genius, with the beft aft ance, and the fineft examples, breaks forth bu but flowly; and the greatest men have but gradually acquired a juft tafte, and chafte fimple conceptions of beauty. At an immature age, the fenfe of beauty is weak and confused, and requires an excess of colouring to catch its attention. It then prefers extravagance and rant to justnefs, a grofs falfe wit to the engaging light of nature, and the fhewy, rich, and glaring, to the fine and amiable. This is the childhood of taste; but as the human genius ftrengthens and grows to maturity, if it be afted by a happy education, the fenfe of univerfal beauty awakes; it begins to be difgufted with the falfe and mishapen deceptions that pleafed before, and refts with delight on elegant fimplicity, on pictures of eafy beauty and unaffected grandeur. The progrefs of the fine arts in the human mind may be fixed at three remarkable degrees, from their foundation to the loftieft height. The bafis is a fenfe of beauty and of the fublime, the fecond step we may call talte, and the last genius. A fenfe of the beautiful and of the great is univerfal, which appears from the uniformity thereof in the most diftant ages and nations. What was engaging and fublime in ancient Greece and Rome, are fo at this day: and, as I obferved before, there is not the leaft neceffity of improvement or fcience, to discover the charms of a graceful or noble deportment. There is a fine, but an ineffectual light in the breaft of man. After nightfall we have admired the planet Venus; the beauty and vivacity of her luftre, the immenfe diftance from which we judged ber beams iffued, and the filence of the night, all concurred to frike us with an agreeable amazement. But the fhone in diftinguished beauty, with out giving fufficient light to direct our fteps, or thew us the objects around us. Thus in unimproved nature, the light of the mind is bright and ufelefs. In utter barbarity, our profpect of it is fill lefs fixed; it appears, and then again feems wholly to vanish in the favage breaft, like the fame planet Venus, when the has but just raifed her orient beams to marriners above the waves, and is now defcried, and now loft, through the fwelling billows. The next step is taste, the subject of our enquiry, which confifts in a distinct, unconfufed knowledge of the great and beautiful. Although you fee not many poffeffed of a good tafte, yet the generality of mankind are capable of it. The very populace of Athens had acquired a good tafte by habit and fine examples, so that a delicacy of judgment feemed natural to all who breathed the air of that elegant city: we find a manly and elevated fenfe diftinguish the common people of Rome and of all the cities of Greece, while the level of mankind was preferved in those cities; while the Plebeians had a share in the government, and an utter feparation was not made between them and the nobles, by wealth and luxury. But when once the common people are rent asunder wholly from the great and opulent, and made fubfervient to the luxury of the latter; then the taste of nature infallibly takes her flight from both parties. The poor by a fordid habit, and an attention wholly confined to mean views, and the rich by an attention to the changeable modes of fancy, and a vitiated preference for the rich and coftly, lofe view of fimple beauty and grandeur. It may feem a paradox, and yet I am firmly perfuaded, that it would be eafier at this day to give a good tafte to the young favages of America, than to the noble youth of Eu rope. Genius, the pride of man, as man is of the creation, has been poffeffed but by few, even in the brighteft ages. Men of fuperior genius, while they fee the rest of mankind painfully ftruggling to comprehend obvious truths, glance themselves through the most remote confequences, like lightning through a path that cannot be traced. They fee the beauties of nature with life and warmth, and paint them forcibly without effort, as the morning fun does the fcenes he rifes upon; and in feveral inftances, communicate to objects a morning freth ncts and unaccountable luftre, that is not feen in the creation of nature. The poet, the ftatuary, the painter, have produced images that left nature far behind. The constellations of extraordinary perfonages who appeared in Greece and Rome, at or near the fame period of time, after ages of darkness to which we know no beginning; and the long barrenness of thofe countries after in great men, prove that genius owes much of its luftre to a perfonal conteft of glory, and the ftrong rivalfhip of great examples within actual view and knowledge; and that great parts alone are not able to lift a perfon out of barbarity. It is further to be obferved, that when the infpiring fpirit of the fine arts retired, and left inanimate and cold the breafts breafts of poets, painters, and ftatuaries, men of talte ftill remained, who diftinguished and admired the beauteous monuments of genius; but the power of execution was loft; and although monarchs loved and courted the arts, yet they refused to return. From whence it is evident, that neither taste, nor natural parts, form the creating genius that inspired the great maiters of antiquity, and that they owed their extraordinary powers to fomething different from both. If we confider the numbers of men who wrote well, and excelled in every department of the liberal arts, in the ages of genius, and the fimplicity that always at tends beauty; we must be led to think, that although few perhaps can reach to the fupreme beauty of imagination difplayed by the first rate poets, orators, and philofophers; yet moft men are capable of just thinking and agreeable writing; Nature lies very near our refictions, and will appear, if we be not mifled and prejudiced before the fenfe of beauty grows to maturity. The populace of Athens and Rome prove ftrongly, that uncommon parts or great learning are not neceffary to make men think justly. Ujker. 229. Thoughts on the Human Capacity. We know not the bounds of tafle, bechufe we are unacquainted with the extent and boun laries of the human genius. The mind in ignorance is like a fleeping giant; it has immenfe capacities without the power of using them. By listening to the lectures of Socrates, men grew heroes, philofophers, and legiflators; for he of all manLind feemed to have difcovered the fhort and lightfome path to the faculties of the mind. To give you an inftance of the human capacity, that comes more immediately within your notice, what graces, what fentiments, have been transplanted into the motion of a minuet, of which a favage has no conception! We know not to what degree of rapture harmony is capable of being carried, nor what hidden powers may be in yet unexperienced beauties of the imagination, whofe objects are in fcenes and in worlds we are ftrangers to. Children, who die young, have no conception of the fentiment of perfonal beauty. Are we certain that we are not yet children in refpect to several species of beauties? We are ignorant whether there be not paffions in the foul, that have Let us now confider by what means tafte is ufually depraved and lost in a nation, that is neither conquered by barbariana nor has lot the improvements in agricul ture, hufbandry, and defence, that allow men leifure for reflection and embellishment. I obferved before that this natural but it may lie oppreffed by barbarity. light is not fo clear in the greatest men. When people of mean parts, and of pride without genius, get into elevated ftations, they want a tafle for fimple grandeur, and miltake for it what is uncommonly glaring and extraordinary; whence proceeds falle wit of every kind, a gaudy richness in drefs, an oppreffive load of ornament in building, and a grandeur overftrained and puerile universally. I muft obferve, that people of bad taste and little genius almot always lay a great itrefs on trivial matters, and are oftentatious and exact in fingularities, or in a decorum in trifles. When people of mean parts appear in high ftations, and at the head of the fashionable world, they cannot fail to introduce a falfe embroidered habit of mind: people of nearly the fame genius, who make up the crowd, will admire and follow them; and at length folitary tafte, adorned only by noble fimplicity, will be loft in the general example. Allo when a nation is much corrupted; when avarice and a love of gain have feized upon the hearts of men; when the nebles ignominiously bend their necks to corruption and bribery, or enter into the bafe myfteries of gaming; then decency, elevated principles, and greatness of soul, expire; and all that remains is a comedy or puppet-thew of elegance, in which the dancing-master and peer are upon a level, and the mind is understood to have no part in the drama of politeness, or else to act under a mean difguife of virtues which it is not poffessed of. Ibid. Upon putting together the whole of our reflections you fee two different natures laving claim to the human race, and dragging it different ways. You fee a neceffity, that arises from our fituation and circamilances, bending us down into unworthy mifery and fordid bafenefs; and you fee, when we can escape from the infulting tyranny of our fate, and acquire cafe and freedom, a generous nature, that lay ftupified and oppreffed, begin to awake and charm us with profpects of beauty and glory. This awaking genius gazes in rapture at the beauteous and elevating fcenes of nature. The beauties of nature are familiar, and charm it like a mother's bofom; and the objects which have the plain marks of immenfe power and grandeur, raife in it a ftill, an inquifitive, and trembling delight: but genius often throws over the objects of its conceptions colours finer than thofe of nature, and opens a paradife that exifts no where but in its own creations. The bright and peaceful fcenes of Arcadia, and the lovely defcriptions of paftoral poetry, never exifted on earth, no more than Pope's fhepherds or the river gods of Windfor foreft: it is all but a charming illufion, which the mind firt paints with celestial colours and then langues for. Knight-errantry is another kind of delufion, which, though it be fictitious in fact, yet is true in fentiment. I believe there are few people who in their youth, before they be corrupted by the commerce of the world, are not knighterrants and princeffes in their hearts. The foul, in a beauteous ecstacy, communicates a flame to words which they had not; and poetry, by its quick tranfitions, bold figures, lively images, and the variety of efforts to paint the latent rapture, bears witnefs, that the confufed ideas of the mind are fill infinitely fuperior, and beyond the reach of all defcription. It is this divine fpirit that, when rouled from its lethargy, breathes in noble fentiments, that charms in elegance, that ftamps upon marble or canvas the figures of gods and heroes, that inspires them with an air above humanity, and leads the foul through the enchanting meanders of mufic in a waking vifion, through which it cannot break, to difcover the near objects that charm it. How fhall we venture to trace the ob. ject of this furprizing beauty peculiar to genius, which evidently does not come to the mind from the fenfes ? It is not conveyed in found, for we feel the founds of mufc charm us by gently agitating and fwelling the paffions, and fetting fome paffions afloat, for which we have no name, and knew not until they were awaked in the mind by harmony. This beauty does not arrive at the mind by the ideas of vifion, though it be moved by them; for it evidently beltows on the mimic reprefentations and images the mind makes of the objects of fenfe, an enchanting loveliness that never existed in thofe objects. Where fhall the foul find this amazing beauty, whofe very fhadow, glimmering upon the imagination, opens unfpeakable raptures in it, and diftracts it with languishing pleafure? What are thofe ftranger fentiments that lie in wait in the foul, until mufic calls them forth? What is the obfcure but unavoidable value or merit of virtue? or who is the law-maker in the mind who gives it a worth and dignity beyond all eftimation, and punishes the breach of it with confcious terror and despair? What is it, in objects of immeafurable power and grandeur, that we look for with ftill amazement and awful delight?-But I find, madam, we have been infenfibly led into fubjects too abftrufe and fevere; I must not put the graces with whom we have been converfing to flight, and draw the ferious air of meditation over that countenance where the fmiles naturally dwell. I have, in confequence of your permiffion, pat together fuch thoughts as occurred to me on good tafte. I told you, if I had leifure hereafter, I would difpofe of them with more regularity, and add any new obfervations that I may make. Before I finish, I muft in juftice make my acknowledgments of the afliftance I received. I took notice, at the beginning, that Rollin's Obfervations on Tafte gave occafion to this difcourfe. Sir Harry Beaumoat's polifhed dialogue on beauty, called Crito, was of fervice to me; and I have availed myfelf of the writings and fentiments of the ancients, particularly of the poets and ftatuaries of Greece, which was the native and original country of the graces and fine arts. But I fhould be very unjust, if I did not make my chief acknowledgments where they are more peculiarly due. If your modefty will not fuffer me to draw that picture from which I borrowed my ideas of elegance, I am bound breafts of poets, painters, and ftatuaries, men of talte ftill remained, who diftinguished and admired the beauteous monuments of genius; but the power of execution was lot; and although monarchs loved and courted the arts, yet they refused to return. From whence it is evident, that neither taste, nor natural parts, form the creating genius that inspired the great maiters of antiquity, and that they owed their extraordinary powers to fomething different from both. If we confider the numbers of men who wrote well, and excelled in every department of the liberal arts, in the ages of genies, and the fimplicity that always attends beauty; we must be led to think, that although few perhaps can reach to the fupreme beauty of imagination difplayed by the first rate poets, orators, and philofophers; yet moft men are capable of just thinking and agreeable writing; Nature lies very near our reflctions, and will appear, if we be not mifled and prejudiced before the fenfe of beauty grows to maturity. The populace of Athens and Rome prove ftrongly, that uncommon parts or great learning are not neceffary to make men think justly. Ujker. $229. Thoughts on the Human Capacity. We know not the bounds of tafle, becufe we are unacquainted with the extent and boun laries of the human genius. The mind in ignorance is like a fleeping giant; it has immenfe capacities without the power of using them. By listening to the lectures of Socrates, men grew heroes, philofophers, and legislators; for he of all mankind feemed to have difcovered the fhort and lightfome path to the faculties of the mind. To give you an inflance of the human capacity, that comes more immediately within your notice, what graces, what fentiments, have been transplanted into the motion of a minuet, of which a fivage has no conception! We know not to what degree of rapture harmony is capable of being carried, nor what hidden powers may be in yet unexperienced beauties of the imagination, whose objects are in fcenes and in worlds we are ftrangers to. Children, who die young, have no conception of the fentiment of perfonal beauty. Are we certain that we are not yet children in respect to several species of beauties? We are ignorant whether there be not paffions in the foul, that have is ufually depraved and loft in a nation, Let us now confider by what means taffe nor has lost the improvements in agricol that is neither conquered by barbarians ture, hufbandry, and defence, that allow men leifure for reflection and embellishlight is not fo clear in the greateft men, but it may lie oppreffed by barbarity. When people of mean parts, and of pride they want a tale for fimple grandeur, and without genius, get into elevated ftations, mittake for it what is uncommonly glaring and extraordinary; whence proceeds falic wit of every kind, a gaudy richness in drefs, an oppreffive load of ornament in building, and a grandeur overtrained and puerile univerfally. I muft obferve, that people of bad tafte and little genius almo always lay a great trefs on trivial matters, and are oftentatious and exact in fingularities, or in a decorum in trifles. When people of mean parts appear in high ftations, and at the head of the fashionable world, they cannot fail to introduce a false embroidered habit of mind: people of nearly the fame genius, who make up the crowd, will admire and follow them; and at length folitary tafte, adorned only by noble fimplicity, will be loft in the general example. ment, I obferved before that this natural Alio when a nation is much corrupted; when avarice and a love of gain have feized upon the hearts of men; when the nebles ignominiously bend their necks to corruption and bribery, or enter into the bafe myfteries of gaming; then decency, elevated principles, and greatness of foul, expire; and all that remains is a comedy or puppet-thew of elegance, in which the dancing-master and peer are upon a level, and the mind is understood to have no part in the drama of politeness, or else to act under a mean difguife of virtues which it is not poffciled of. Ibid. |