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.
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