Taste is arbitrary in many things, as in raiment, decoration, and equipage, which, however, scarcely belong to the department of the fine arts, but are rather affairs of fancy. It is fancy rather than taste which produces so many new fashions.
Taste may become vitiated in a nation, a misfortune which usually follows a period of perfection. Fearing to be called imitators, artists seek new and devious routes, and fly from the pure and beautiful nature of which their predecessors have made so much advantage. If there is merit in these labors, this merit veils their defects, and the public in love with novelty runs after them, and becomes disgusted, which makes way for still minor efforts to please, in which nature is still more abandoned. Taste loses itself amidst this succession of novelties, the last one of which rapidly effaces the other; the public loses its "whereabout," and regrets in vain the flight of the age of good taste, which will return no more, although a remnant of it is still preserved by certain correct spirits, at a distance from the crowd.
There are vast countries in which taste has never existed: such are they in which society is still rude, where the sexes have little general intercourse, and where certain arts, like sculpture and the painting of animated beings, are forbidden by religion. Where there is little general intercourse, the mind is straitened, its edge is blunted, and nothing is possessed on which a taste can be formed. Where several of the fine arts are wanting, the remainder can seldom find sufficient support, as they go hand in hand, and rest one on the other. On this account, the Asiatics have never produced fine arts in any department, and taste is confined to certain nations of Europe.
SECTION II.
Is there not a good and a bad taste? Without doubt; although men differ in opinions, manners, and customs. The best taste in every species of cultivation is to imitate nature with the highest fidelity, energy, and grace. But is not grace arbitrary? No, since it consists in giving animation and sweetness to the objects represented. Between two men, the one of whom is gross and the other refined, it will readily be allowed that one possesses more grace than the other.
Before a polished period arose, Voiture, who in his rage for embroidering nothings, was occasionally refined and agreeable, wrote some verses to the great Condé upon his illness, which are still regarded as very tasteful, and among the best of this author.
At the same time, L'Étoile, who passed for a genius—L'Étoile, one of the five authors who constructed tragedies for Cardinal Richelieu—made some verses, which are printed at the end of Malherbe and Racan. When compared with those of Voiture referred to, every reader will allow that the verses of Voiture are the production of a courtier of good taste, and those of L'Étoile the labor of a coarse and unintellectual pretender.
It is a pity that we can gift Voiture with occasional taste only: his famous letter from the carp to the pike, which enjoyed so much reputation, is a too extended pleasantry, and in passages exhibiting very little nature. Is it not a mixture of refinement and coarseness, of the true and the false? Was it right to say to the great Condé, who was called "the pike" by a party among the courtiers, that at his name the whales of the North perspired profusely, and that the subjects of the emperor had expected to fry and to eat him with a grain of salt? Was it proper to write so many letters, only to show a little of the wit which consists in puns and conceits?
Are we not disgusted when Voiture says to the great Condé, on the taking of Dunkirk: "I expect you to seize the moon with your teeth." Voiture apparently acquired this false taste from Marini, who came into France with Mary of Medici. Voiture and Costar frequently cite him as a model in their letters. They admire his description of the rose, daughter of April, virgin and queen, seated on a thorny throne, extending majestically a flowery sceptre, having for courtiers and ministers the amorous family of the zephyrs, and wearing a crown of gold and a robe of scarlet:
Bella figlia d'Aprile,
Verginella e reina,
Sic lo spinoso trono
Del verde cespo assisa,
De' fior' lo scettro in maestà sostiene;
E corteggiata intorno
Da lascivia famiglia
Di Zefiri ministri,
Porta d'or' la corona et dostro il manto.