h a
feeling for language and a desire to write poetry,"[1] it is clear that
for Leavis these attributes disqualify Lang from being taken seriously
as a poet. But for the age of Pope, "taste" was a key term in its
aesthetic thinking; the meaning and application of the term was a
lively issue which engaged most of the ablest minds of the period.

Addison prefaced his series of Spectator papers on the "Pleasures of
the Imagination" with a ground-clearing essay on "taste" (No. 409). In
this classic account of the term, Addison defines "taste" as "that
Faculty of the Soul, which discerns the Beauties of an Author with
Pleasure, and the Imperfections with Dislike." Addison's "taste" is an
innate proclivity towards certain kinds of aesthetic experience that
has been consciously cultivated in the approved direction. It is not
enough to value and enjoy the right authors; they must be valued and
enjoyed for the right reasons. When he holds up to ridicule the man who
assured him that "the greatest Pleasure he took in reading Virgil, was
in examining Aeneas his Voyage by the Map," Addison clearly expects his
readers to agree that such a singular taste was in fact no taste at
all. His account implies not only a standard of "taste," but also
general agreement, at least among "men of taste," about what the
standard was. It is this circularity that makes it essential to assume
some innate faculty of "taste."

But Addison's prescription for the cultivation of taste was a
laborious one, involving prolonged reading and study. The wealthy, and
especially the newly wealthy, were tempted to confuse the correct
appreciation of the objects of taste with the mere possession of them;
so that, as with Pope's Timon in the _Epistle to Burlington_ (1731),
owning a library became a substitute for reading books. This false
taste for ostentation--especially in buildings--is a frequent target
of contemporary satire.

The social importance of "taste" as an index of wealth was reinforced
by current philosophical thinking that gave "taste" a moral dimension
too. In his _Characteristicks_ (1711), Shaftesbury postulated an innate
moral sense, just as Addison did an innate aesthetic sense. Shaftesbury
draws this analogy between the moral and the aesthetic:

The Case is the same here [in the mental or moral Subjects], as in
the ordinary Bodys, or common Subjects of Sense. The Shapes,
Motions, Colours, and Proportions of these being presented to