This is especially true with regard to art: but Coleridge should have put in the word, only, (“only the notions and feelings of another age,”) for a very great pleasure lies in the power of throwing ourselves into the sentiments and notions of one age, while feeling with them, and reflecting upon them, with the riper critical experience which belongs to another age.
139.
A good taste in art feels the presence or the absence of merit; a just taste discriminates the degree,—the poco-più and the poco-meno. A good taste rejects faults; a just taste selects excellences. A good taste is often unconscious; a just taste is always conscious. A good taste may be lowered or spoilt; a just taste can only go on refining more and more.
140.
Artists are interesting to me as men. Their work, as the product of mind, should lead us to a knowledge of their own being; else, as I have often said and written, our admiration of art is a species of atheism. To forget the soul in its highest manifestation is like forgetting God in his creation.