The Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays on Taste, by John Gilbert Cooper

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Title: Essays on Taste

Author: John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen

Release Date: September 15, 2004 [EBook #13464]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS ON TASTE ***

Produced by S.R.Ellison, David Starner, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.

The Augustan Reprint Society

ESSAYS ON TASTE

from

John Gilbert Cooper

_Letters Concerning Taste_

Third Edition (1757)

&

John Armstrong

_Miscellanies_

(1770)

With an Introduction by

Ralph Cohen

Publication Number 30

Los Angeles

William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

University of California

_GENERAL EDITORS_
H. RICHARD ARCHER, _Clark Memorial Library_
RICHARD C. BOYS., _University of Michigan_
EDWARD NILES HOOKER, _University of California, Los Angeles_
JOHN LOFTIS, _University of California, Los Angeles_

_ASSISTANT EDITOR_
W. EARL BRITTON, _University of Michigan_

_ADVISORY EDITORS_
EMMETT L. AVERY, _State College of Washington_
BENJAMIN BOYCE, _Duke University_
LOUIS I. BREDVOLD, _University of Michigan_
CLEANTH BROOKS, _Yale University_
JAMES L. CLIFFORD, _Columbia University_
ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, _University of Chicago_
LOUIS A. LANDA, _Princeton University_
SAMUEL H. MONK, _University of Minnesota_
ERNEST MOSSNER, _University of Texas_
JAMES SUTHERLAND, _Queen Mary College, London_
H.T. SWEDENBERG, JR., _University of California, Los Angeles_

INTRODUCTION

The essays on taste taken from the work of John Gilbert Cooper and
John Armstrong and reprinted in this issue are of interest and value
to the student of the eighteenth century because they typify the
shifting attitudes toward taste held by most mid-century poets and
critics. Cooper, who accepts the Shaftesbury-Hutchesonian thesis of
the internal sense, emphasizes the personal, ecstatic effect of taste.
Armstrong, while accepting