"Of the Standard of Taste" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hume David)

regulate those of others. To seek in the real beauty, or real
deformity, is as fruitless an enquiry, as to pretend to
ascertain the real sweet or real bitter. According to the
disposition of the organs, the same object may be both sweet
and bitter; and the proverb has justly determined it to be
fruitless to dispute concerning tastes. It is very natural,
and even quite necessary to extend this axiom to mental, as
well as bodily taste; and thus common sense, which is so often
at variance with philosophy, especially with the skeptical
kind, is found, in one instance at least, to agree in
pronouncing the same decision.

But though this axiom, by passing into a proverb, seems to
have attained the sanction of common sense; there is certainly
a species of common sense which opposes it, at least serves to
modify and restrain it. Whoever would assert an equality of
genius and elegance between OGILBY and MILTON, or BUNYAN and
ADDISON, would be thought to defend no less an extravagance,
than if he had maintained a mole-hill to be as high as
TENERIFFE, or a pond as extensive as the ocean. Though there
may be found persons, who give the preference to the former
authors; no one pays attention to such a taste; and we
pronounce without scruple the sentiment of these pretended
critics to be absurd and ridiculous. The principle of the
natural equality of tastes is then totally forgot, and while
we admit it on some occasions, where the objects seem near an
equality, it appears an extravagant paradox, or rather a
palpable absurdity, where objects so disproportioned are
compared together.

It is evident that none of the rules of composition are fixed
by reasonings a priori, or can be esteemed abstract
conclusions of the understanding, from comparing those
habitudes and relations of ideas, which are eternal and
immutable. Their foundation is the same with that of all the
practical sciences, experience; nor are they any thing but
general observations, concerning what has been universally
found to please in all countries and in all ages. Many of the
beauties of poetry and even of eloquence are founded on
falsehood and fiction, on hyperboles, metaphors, and an abuse
or perversion of terms from their natural meaning. To check
the sallies of the imagination, and to reduce every expression
to geometrical truth and exactness, would be the most contrary
to the laws of criticism; because it would produce a work,
which, by universal experience, has been found the most
insipid and disagreeable. But though poetry can never submit
to exact truth, it must be confined by rules of art,
discovered to the author either by genius or observation. If
some negligent or irregular writers have pleased, they have
not pleased by their transgressions of rule or order, but in