THE TASTE OF THE PRESENT AGE.
Amongst many other distinguishing marks of a stupid age, a bad crop of men, I have been told that the taste in writing was never so false as at present. If it is really so, it may perhaps be owing to a prodigious swarm of insipid trashy writers: amongst whom there are some who pretend to dictate to the public as critics, though they hardly ever fail to be mistaken. But their dogmatic impudence, and something like a scientific air of talking the most palpable nonsense, imposes upon great numbers of people, who really possess a considerable share of natural Taste; of which at the same time they are so little conscious as to suffer themselves passively to be misled by those blundering guides.
A Taste worth cultivating is to be improved and preserved by reading only the best writers. But whoever, after perusing a satire of Horace, even in the dullest English translation, can relish the stupid abuse of a blackguard rhymster, may as well indulge the natural depravity of his Taste, and riot for life upon distiller's grains.
But the Taste in writing is not, cannot be worse, than it is in music, as well as in all theatrical entertainments. In architecture indeed there are some elegant and magnificent works arising, at a very proper time to restore the nation to some credit with its neighbours in this article; after its having been exposed to such repeated disgraces by a triumvirate of awkward clumsey piles, that are not ashamed to shew their stupid heads in the neighbourhood of Whitehall: and one more, that ought to be demolished; if it was for no other reason but to restore the view of an elegant church, which has now for many years been buried alive behind the Mansion-house.
It is indeed some comfort, that while Taste and Genius happen to be very false and impotent in most of the fine arts, they are not so in all. The arts of Gardening particularly, and the elegant plan of a farm, have of late years displayed themselves in a few spots to greater advantage in England, than perhaps ever before in any part of Europe. This is indeed very far from being universal; and some gardens, admired and celebrated still, are so smoothly regular, so over-planted, and so crowded with affected, impertinent, ridiculous ornaments of temples, ruins, pyramids, obelisks, statues, and a thousand other contemptible whims, that a continuation of the same ground in its rude natural state, is infinitely more delightful. You must often have seen fine situations ruined with costly pretences to improvement. The most noble and romantic situation of any gardens I have seen, is near Chepstow; and the gentleman who possesses that delightful spot, has shewn great judgment and a true taste, in meddling so little with Nature where she wanted so little help.
This is one happy instance of an admirable situation, where Nature is modestly and judiciously improved, not hurt, by art. An opposite instance of what art, skill, and taste may produce, without any particular advantages of ground or situation, is most agreeably displayed in the royal gardens at Kew. There you find an extent of flat ground, so easily, agreeably, and unaffectedly broken, that you would think it impossible to alter it but to the worse. To pass without any notice the agreeable and the elegant pieces of architecture, which without crowding adorn those delightful gardens; perhaps there is not a physick garden in Europe where any botanist can be more agreeably entertained, as to the variety of curious plants. But there is something new as far as I know, and particularly ingenious here in the disposition and management of them. Those that naturally delight in the rocks, and the dry hungry soil, are here planted upon ridges of artificial rock-work; where they shew all the luxuriance of vegetation that they could amongst the Alps, the Pyrenees or the Andes. While a very different tribe, the Aquatics, display themselves in a large cistern, where they are constantly supplied with their best and most natural nourishment the rain water, conveyed to them from the eves of the richest greenhouse I have ever seen.
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library: University of California
THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY
General Editors
H. RICHARD ARCHER
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
R.C. BOYS
University of Michigan
E.N. HOOKER
University of California, Los Angeles
JOHN LOFTIS
University of California, Los Angeles
The society exists to make available inexpensive reprints (usually facsimile reproductions) of rare seventeenth and eighteenth century works.
The editorial policy of the Society continues unchanged. As in the past, the editors welcome suggestions concerning publications.
All correspondence concerning subscriptions in the United States and Canada should be addressed to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2205 West Adams Blvd., Los Angeles 18, California. Correspondence concerning editorial matters may be addressed to any of the general editors. Membership fee continues $2.50 per year. British and European subscribers should address B.H. Blackwell, Broad Street, Oxford, England.
Publications for the fifth year [1950-1951]
(At least six items, most of them from the following list, will be reprinted.)
FRANCES REYNOLDS (?): An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of Our Ideas of Beauty, &c. (1785). Introduction by James L. Clifford.
THOMAS BAKER: The Fine lady's Airs (1709). Introduction by John
Harrington Smith.
DANIEL DEFOE: Vindication of the Press (1718). Introduction by Otho
Clinton Williams.
JOHN EVELYN: An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); A Panegyric to
Charles the Second (1661). Introduction by Geoffrey Keynes.
CHARLES MACKLIN: Man of the World (1781). Introduction by Dougald
MacMillan.
Prefaces to Fiction. Selected and with an Introduction by Benjamin Boyce.
THOMAS SPRAT: Poems.
SIR WILLIAM PETTY: The Advice of W.P. to Mr. Samuel Hartlib for the
Advancement of some particular Parts of Learning (1648).
THOMAS GRAY: An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751). (Facsimile of first edition and of portions of Gray's manuscripts of the poem).
* * * * *
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