Armstrong, while
describing taste as the sensitive discrimination of degrees of beauty
and deformity, bases this discrimination not on artistic, but on moral
qualities.
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, II, 134.]
The complete transition from classic to romantic premises of taste is
characterized by the separation of art from morals. This step neither
Cooper nor Armstrong takes. But they do exhibit tendencies which
explain how the shift was made possible. Both writers insist on a felt
response to a work of art. Cooper emphasizes that this response must
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.
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