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Untitled Article
alternate bands of black and white ! Nothing but confusion would arise from our adoption of the opinions of these persona to guide us in selecting furniture , or in conducting landscape gardening , intended to please many and please long .
The question , therefore , whether there be a standard of taste , is , in effect , the question , whether the beauty or sublimity of objects of imagination ; that is produced by them ; depend upon such fixed laws , in relation to general humanity , as may justify us in assigning to them a determinate , ultimate character with
reference to this , ~ which may afford us sufficient grounds for ranking one work of art above another , or one class of such works above another class , by a paramount and trans- * cendental title , elevated above and distinguished from their casual—the irregular , partial , and transitory—influence ?
The power of a work of art to gratify the imagination of an individual , or of a time , may be influenced and altered by all the accidents by which circumstances of education , taking the word in its widest sense , check the free growth of the mind , and the most advantageous development of our sympathies ; but the continuance of this power through a lapse of ages , the homage , decided and unanimous , of the most cultivated minds .
and of all minds as they advance in cultivation—the power of pleasing many , and of pleasing permanently , which we find possessed by some objects so pre-eminently above others ; these examples might convince us that the human race has one common heart , that their sympathies are regulated by one general harmony , and that whoever addresses successfully , and touches this general nature , is secure of audience and admiration to the end of the world . Critics have said and
have written , that there is no permanent and general and paramount Standard of Taste ; but if this be so , wherefore do they continue to criticise !—and to criticise with such absolute and authoritative assurance ; for what is criticism but an eati * mate of the value of a work of art , a comparison of its powers and tendency to a standard which must be tacitly assumed to be generally applicable , or the criticism could have no title to general interest , and would not be written ?
The principles—that the character of a work of art , of its tendency to affect minds of the highest cultivation , is one and determinate ; that as the progress of minds proceeds , they will approach nearer , and more nearly to unanimity of thought and feeling with respect to principles ; and that this ultimate
relation is the standard of taste for any work of art or object of nature addressing the imagination ; ( according to the agreement or disagreement of our opinions with which standard they are to be characterised , as right or wrong , good or bad , correct or incorrect j might perhaps Wthought sufficiently establish ^ by tfte
Untitled Article
Is there a Standard of Taste ¥ 3 i
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1837, page 31, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1827/page/33/
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