But if you find it necessary to comply with the humour of your age; the writing best calculated to please a false taste is what has something of the air of good writing, without being really so. For to the vulgar eye the specious is more striking than the genuine. The best writing is apt to be too plain, too simple, too unaffected, and too delicate to stir the callous organs of the generality of critics, who see nothing but the tawdry glare of tinsel; and are deaf to every thing but what is shockingly noisy to a true ear. They are struck with the fierce glaring colours of old Frank; with attitudes and expressions violent, distorted, and unnatural: while the true, just and easy, the graceful, the moving, the sublime representations of Raphael have not the least power to attract them. The bullying, noisy march in Judas Macchabeus has perhaps more sincere admirers than that most pathetic one in Saul: and in conversation pertness and mere vivacity is more felt by the general run of company than easy unaffected wit; as flashy, bouncing, flatulent cyder boasts of more spirit than the still vigour of reserved Madeira.
But the easiest, as well as the most effectual way of writing to the bad taste of your age, is to set out while your genius is yet upon a level with it. Accordingly, if you have a son who begins to display a hopeful bloom of imagination, be sure to publish, with all the advantages that can be procured, the very first essays of his genius. They will hardly be too good to please; and besides, they have a chance to be received with particular favour and admiration as the productions of a young muse. When he has thus taken possession of the public ear, he may venture, as his genius ripens, to do his best; he may write as well as he can, perhaps without much danger of sinking in reputation. The renown of his first crude essays will be sufficient to prejudice the mobility, great and small, in favour of the most exquisite pieces he can produce afterwards. But if he must live by his wit, the best thing you can do for him is to transplant him, as early as possible, to PARIS; where in the worst of days, in the most Gothic muse-detesting age, there is still some shelter afforded to the most delicate as well as the most uncommon flower that blossoms in the human mind. In that gay serene and genial climate the muses are still more or less cultivated, though not with the same ardour and passion in every age; as appears from the following passage translated from a[A] French author, who wrote about the beginning of the present century. "Almost all the arts have in their turns experienced that disgust and love of change which is natural to mankind. But I don't know that any one of them has felt it more than Poetry; which in some ages has been exalted to a triumphal heighth, in others neglected, discouraged and despised. About sixty years ago, under the administration of one of the greatest geniuses that ever France produced, poetry found itself amongst us at its highest pitch of glory. Those who cultivated the muses were regarded with particular favour: this art was the road to fortune and dignified stations. But in these days this ardour seems to be considerably abated. We do not appear to be extremely sensible to poetical merit, &c."
[Footnote A: Defense de la Poesie; par M. l'Abbé Messieu. Memoíres de
Literature, Tome 2de.]
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