ignorance of some necessary
_mediums_; to a want of proper application; to many other causes besides
a defect in the principles we employ. In reality, the subject requires a
much closer attention than we dare claim from our manner of treating
it.

If it should not appear on the face of the work, I must caution the
reader against imagining that I intended a full dissertation on the
Sublime and Beautiful. My inquiry went no farther than to the origin of
these ideas. If the qualities which I have ranged under the head of the
Sublime be all found consistent with each other, and all different from
those which I place under the head of Beauty; and if those which compose
the class of the Beautiful have the same consistency with themselves,
and the same opposition to those which are classed under the
denomination of Sublime, I am in little pain whether anybody chooses to
follow the name I give them or not, provided he allows that what I
dispose under different heads are in reality different things in nature.
The use I make of the words may be blamed, as too confined or too
extended; my meaning cannot well be misunderstood.

To conclude: whatever progress may be made towards the discovery of
truth in this matter, I do not repent the pains I have taken in it. The
use of such inquiries may be very considerable. Whatever turns the soul
inward on itself, tends to concentre its forces, and to fit it for
greater and stronger flights of science. By looking into physical causes
our minds are opened and enlarged; and in this pursuit, whether we take
or whether we lose our game, the chase is certainly of service. Cicero,
true as he was to the academic philosophy, and consequently led to
reject the certainty of physical, as of every other kind of knowledge,
yet freely confesses its great importance to the human understanding:
"_Est animorum ingeniorumque nostrorum naturale quoddam quasi pabulum
consideratio contemplatioque naturae_." If we can direct the lights we
derive from such exalted speculations upon the humbler field of the
imagination, whilst we investigate the springs, and trace the courses of
our passions, we may not only communicate to the taste a sort of
philosophical solidity, but we may reflect back on the severer sciences
some of the graces and elegances of taste, without which the greatest
proficiency in those sciences will always have the appearance of
something illiberal.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION: On Taste