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We meet with the same heroic sentiment in Virgil.

&

Non pudet, O Rutuli, cunctis pro talibus unam
Objectare animam ? numerone, an viribus æqui
Non sumus-

?

En. xii. 229.

For shame, Rutulians, can you bear the sight

Of one expos'd for all, in single fight?

Can we before the face of Heav'n confess

Our courage colder, or our numbers less?

Dryden.

What can be more natural or more moving, than the circumstances in which he describes the behaviour of those women who had lost their husbands on this fatal day?

"Next day did many widows come

Their husbands to bewail;

They washed their wounds in brinish tears,

But all would not prevail.

"Their bodies bath'd in purple blood,

They bore with them away;

They kiss'd them dead a thousand times,
When they were clad in clay."

Thus we see how the thoughts of this poem, which naturally arise from the subject, are always simple, and sometimes exquisitely noble; that the language is often very sounding, and that the whole is written with a true poetical spirit.

If this song had been written in the gothic manner, which is the delight of all our little wits, whether writers or readers, it would not have hit

the taste of so many ages, and have pleased the readers of all ranks and conditions. I shall only beg pardon for such a profusion of Latin quotations; which I should not have made use of, but that I feared my own judgment would have looked too singular on such a subject, had not I supported it by the practice and authority of Virgil.

XLIII.

TASTE.

Museo contingere cuncta lepore.

Lucr. Lib. i. 983.

To grace each subject with enliv'ning wit.

GRATIAN very often recommends fine taste as the utmost perfection of an accomplished man.

As this word arises very often in conversation, I shall endeavour to give some account of it, and to lay down rules how we may know whether we are possessed of it, and how we may acquire that fine taste of writing, which is so much talked of among the polite world.

Most languages make use of this metaphor, to express that faculty of the mind which distinguishes all the most concealed faults and nicest perfections in writing. We may be sure this metaphor would not have been so general in all tongues, had there not been a very great conformity between that mental taste, which is the subject of this paper, and that sensitive taste, which gives us a relish of every different flavour that affects the palate. Accordingly we find there are

as many degrees of refinement in the intellectual faculty as in the sense which is marked out by this common denomination.

I knew a person who possessed the one in so great a perfection, that, after having tasted ten different kinds of tea, he would distinguish, without seeing the colour of it, the particular sort which was offered him; and not only so, but any two sorts of them that were mixed together in an equal proportion; nay, he has carried the experiment so far, as, upon tasting the composition of three different sorts, to name the parcels from whence the three several ingredients were taken. A man of a fine taste in writing will discern, after the same manner, not only the general beauties and imperfections of an author, but discover the several ways of thinking and expressing himself, which diversify him from all other authors, with the several foreign infusions of thought and language, and the particular authors from whom they were borrowed.

After having thus far explained what is generally meant by a fine taste in writing, and shown the propriety of the metaphor which is used on this occasion, I think I may define it to be "that faculty of the soul, which discerns the beauties of an author with pleasure, and the imperfections with dislike." If a man would know whether he is possessed of this faculty, I would have him read over the celebrated works of antiquity, which have stood the test of so many different ages and

countries, or those works among the moderns which have the sanction of the politer part of our contemporaries. If, upon the perusal of such writings, he does not find himself delighted in an extraordinary manner, or if, upon reading the admired passages in such authors, he finds a coldness and indifference in his thoughts, he ought to conclude, not (as is too usual among tasteless readers) that the author wants those perfections which have been admired in him, but that he himself wants the faculty of discovering them.

He should, in the second place, be very careful to observe, whether he tastes the distinguishing perfections, or, if I may he allowed to call them so, the specific qualities of the author whom he peruses; whether he is particularly pleased with Livy, for his manner of telling a story, with Sallust, for entering into those internal principles of action which arise from the characters and manners of the person he describes, or with Tacitus, for displaying those outward motives of safety and interest which gave birth to the whole series of transactions which he relates.

He may likewise consider, how differently he is affected by the same thought which presents itself in a great writer, from what he is when he finds it delivered by a person of an ordinary genius; for there is as much difference in apprehending a thought clothed in Cicero's language, and that of a common author, as in seeing an object by the light of a taper, or by the light of the sun.

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