iking and affecting
incident. So far as taste is natural, it is nearly common to all.

In poetry, and other pieces of imagination, the same parity may be
observed. It is true, that one man is charmed with Don Bellianis, and
reads Virgil coldly; whilst another is transported with the AEneid, and
leaves Don Bellianis to children. These two men seem to have a taste
very different from each other; but in fact they differ very little. In
both these pieces, which inspire such opposite sentiments, a tale
exciting admiration is told; both are full of action, both are
passionate; in both are voyages, battles, triumphs, and continual
changes of fortune. The admirer of Don Bellianis perhaps does not
understand the refined language of the AEneid, who, if it was degraded
into the style of the "Pilgrim's Progress," might feel it in all its
energy, on the same principle which made him an admirer of Don
Bellianis.

In his favorite author he is not shocked with the continual breaches of
probability, the confusion of times, the offences against manners, the
trampling upon geography; for he knows nothing of geography and
chronology, and he has never examined the grounds of probability. He
perhaps reads of a shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia: wholly taken up
with so interesting an event, and only solicitous for the fate of his
hero, he is not in the least troubled at this extravagant blunder. For
why should he be shocked at a shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia, who
does not know but that Bohemia may be an island in the Atlantic ocean?
and after all, what reflection is this on the natural good taste of the
person here supposed?

So far then as taste belongs to the imagination, its principle is the
same in all men; there is no difference in the manner of their being
affected, nor in the causes of the affection; but in the _degree_ there
is a difference, which arises from two causes principally; either from a
greater degree of natural sensibility, or from a closer and longer
attention to the object. To illustrate this by the procedure of the
senses, in which the same difference is found, let us suppose a very
smooth marble table to be set before two men; they both perceive it to
be smooth, and they are both pleased with it because of this quality. So
far they agree. But suppose another, and after that another table, the
latter still smoother than the former, to be set before them. It is now
very probable that these men, who are so agreed up