that ideas of imitation do give
pleasure; by them, too, objects of beauty may be represented. We
should not say that a picture by Gerard Dow or Van Eyck; even with the
down on the peach and the dew on the leaf, were not good pictures.
They are good if they please. It is true, they ought to do more, and
even that in a higher degree; they cannot be works of greatness--and
greatness was probably meant in the word good. In his chapter on
"Ideas of Beauty," he considers that we derive, naturally and
instinctively, pleasure from the contemplation of certain material
objects; for which no other reason can be given than that it is our
instinct--the will of our Maker--we enjoy them "instinctively and
necessarily, as we derive sensual pleasure from the scent of a rose."
But we have instinctively aversion as well as desire; though he admits
this, he seems to lose sight of it in the following--"And it would
appear that we are intended by the Deity to be constantly under their
influence, (ideas of beauty;) because there is not one single object
in nature which is not capable of conveying them," &c. We are not
satisfied; if the instinctive desire be the index to what is
beautiful, so must the instinctive aversion be the index to its
opposite. We have an instinctive dislike to many reptiles, to many
beasts--as apes. These _may_ have in them some beauty; we only object
to the author's want of clearness. If there be no ugliness there is no
beauty, for every thing has its opposite; so that we think he has not
yet discovered and clearly put before us what beauty consists in. He
shows how it happens that we do admire it instinctively; but that does
not tell us what it is, and possibly, after all that has been said
about it, it yet remains to be told. Nor are we satisfied with his
definition of taste--"Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the
greatest possible pleasure from those material sources which are
attractive to our moral nature in its purity and perfection." This
will not do; for taste will take material sources, unattractive in
themselves, and by combination, or for their contrast, receive
pleasure from them. All literature and all art show this. That taste,
like life itself, is instinctive in its origin and first motion, we
doubt not; but what it is by and in its cultivation, and in its
application to art, is a thing not to be altogether so cursorily
discussed and dismissed. The distinction is laid down between taste
and ju