one immutable verity there are likewise what we have called

apparent or secondary truths proceeding from local and temporary

prejudices, fancies, fashions, or accidental connection of ideas;

if it appears that these last have still their foundation, however

slender, in the original fabric of our minds, it follows that all

these truths or beauties deserve and require the attention of the

artist in proportion to their stability or duration, or as their

influence is more or less extensive. And let me add that as they

ought not to pass their just bounds, so neither do they, in a well-

regulated taste, at all prevent or weaken the influence of these

general principles, which alone can give to art its true and

permanent dignity.

To form this just taste is undoubtedly in your own power, but it is

to reason and philosophy that you must have recourse; from them we

must borrow the balance by which is to be weighed and estimated the

value of every pretension that intrudes itself on your notice.

The general objection which is made to the introduction of

philosophy into the regions of taste is, that it checks and

restrains the flights of the imagination, and gives that timidity

which an over-carefulness not to err or act contrary to reason is

likely to produce.

It is not so. Fear is neither reason nor philosophy. The true

spirit of philosophy by giving knowledge gives a manly confidence,

and substitutes rational firmness in the place of vain presumption.

A man of real taste is always a man of judgment in other respects;

and those inventions which either disdain or shrink from reason,

are generally, I fear, more like the dreams of a distempered brain

than the exalted enthusiasm of a sound and true genius. In the

midst of the highest flights of fancy or imagination, reason ought

to preside from first to last, though I admit her more powerful

operation is upon reflection.