necessity can be but one; that besides this one immutable verity
there are likewise what we have called apparent or secondary truths
proceeding from local and temporary prejudices, fancies, fashions, or
accidental connection of ideas; if it appears that these last have still
their foundation, however slender, in the original fabric of our minds,
it follows that all these truths or beauties deserve and require the
attention of the artist in proportion to their stability or duration, or
as their influence is more or less extensive. And let me add that as
they ought not to pass their just bounds, so neither do they, in a well-
regulated taste, at all prevent or weaken the influence of these general
principles, which alone can give to art its true and permanent dignity.

To form this just taste is undoubtedly in your own power, but it is to
reason and philosophy that you must have recourse; from them we must
borrow the balance by which is to be weighed and estimated the value of
every pretension that intrudes itself on your notice.

The general objection which is made to the introduction of philosophy
into the regions of taste is, that it checks and restrains the flights of
the imagination, and gives that timidity which an over-carefulness not to
err or act contrary to reason is likely to produce.

It is not so. Fear is neither reason nor philosophy. The true spirit of
philosophy by giving knowledge gives a manly confidence, and substitutes
rational firmness in the place of vain presumption. A man of real taste
is always a man of judgment in other respects; and those inventions which
either disdain or shrink from reason, are generally, I fear, more like
the dreams of a distempered brain than the exalted enthusiasm of a sound
and true genius. In the midst of the highest flights of fancy or
imagination, reason ought to preside from first to last, though I admit
her more powerful operation is upon reflection.

I cannot help adding that some of the greatest names of antiquity, and
those who have most distinguished themselves in works of genius and
imagination, were equally eminent for their critical skill. Plato,
Aristotle, Cicero, and Horace; and among the moderns, Boileau, Corneille,
Pope, and Dryden, are at least instances of genius not being destroyed by
attention or subjection to rules and science. I should hope, therefore,
that the natural consequence likewise of what has been said would be to
excite in you a des