sentiments as these, we generally rest contented with mere words, or at best entertain notions not only groundless but pernicious. If all this means, what it is very possible was originally intended only to be meant, that in order to cultivate an art, a man secludes himself from the commerce of the world, and retires into the country at particular seasons: or that at one time of the year his body is in better health, and consequently his mind fitter for the business of hard thinking than at another time; or that the mind may be fatigued and grow confused by long and unremitted application; this I can understand. I can likewise believe, that a man eminent when young for possessing poetical imagination, may, from having taken another road, so neglect its cultivation, as to show less of its powers in his latter life. But I am persuaded, that scarce a poet is to be found, from Homer down to Dryden, who preserved a sound mind in a sound body, and continued practising his profession to the very last, whose latter works are not as replete with the fire of imagination, as those which were produced in his more youthful days. To understand literally these metaphors, or ideas expressed in poetical language, seems to be equally absurd as to conclude, that because painters sometimes represent poets writing from the dictates of a little winged boy or genius, that this same genius did really inform him in a whisper what he was to write; and that he is himself but a mere machine, unconscious of the operations of his own mind. I have mentioned taste in dress, which is certainly one of the lowest subjects to which this word is applied; yet, as I have before observed, there is a right even here, however narrow its foundation, respecting the fashion of any particular nation. But we have still more slender means of determining, to which of the different customs of different ages or countries we ought to give the preference, since they seem to be all equally removed from nature. If an European, when he has cut off his beard, and put false hair on his head, or bound up his own natural hair in regular hard knots, as unlike nature as he can possibly make it ; and after having rendered them immovable by the help of the fat of hogs, has covered the whole with flour, laid on by a machine with the utmost regularity; if, when thus attired, he issues forth, and meets a Cherokee Indian, who has bestowed as much time at his toilet, and laid on with equal care and attention his yellow and red oker on particular parts of his forehead or cheeks, as he judges most becoming; whoever of these two despises the other for this attention to the fashion of his country, whichever first feels himself provoked to laugh, is the barbarian. (From the Seventh Discourse.) BEAUTY THE art which we profess has beauty for its object; this it is our business to discover and to express; the beauty of which we are in quest is general and intellectual; it is an idea that subsists only in the mind; the sight never beheld it, nor has the hand expressed it: it is an idea residing in the breast of the artist, which he is always labouring to impart, and which he dies at last without imparting; but which he is yet so far able to communicate, as to raise the thoughts, and extend the views of the spectator; and which, by a succession of art, may be so far diffused, that its effects may extend themselves imperceptibly into public benefits, and be among the means of bestowing on whole nations refinement of taste: which, if it does not lead directly to purity of manners, obviates at least their greatest depravation, by disentangling the mind from appetite, and conducting the thoughts through successive stages of excellence, till that contemplation of universal rectitude and harmony which began by taste, may, as it is exalted and refined, conclude in virtue. (From the Ninth Discourse.) JOHNSON AGAINST GARRICK Dr. Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds Reynolds. Let me alone, I'll bring him out (Aside). I have been thinking, Dr. Johnson, this morning, on a matter that has puzzled me very much; it is a subject that I daresay has often passed in your thoughts, and though I cannot, I dare say you have made up your mind upon it. Johnson. Tilly fally! what is all this preparation, what is all this mighty matter? Reyn. Why, it is a very weighty matter. The subject I have been thinking upon is, predestination and freewill, two things I cannot reconcile together for the life of me; in my opinion, Dr. Johnson, freewill and foreknowledge cannot be reconciled. Johns. Sir, it is not of very great importance what your opinion is upon such a question. Reyn. But I meant only, Dr. J., to know your opinion. Johns. No, sir, you meant no such thing; you meant only to show these gentlemen that you are not the man they took you to be, but that you think of high matters sometimes, and that you may have the credit of having it said that you held an argument with Sam Johnson on predestination and freewill; a subject of that magnitude as to have engaged the attention of the world, to have perplexed the wisdom of man for these two thousand years; a subject on which the fallen angels, who had not yet lost their original brightness, find themselves in wandering mazes lost. That such a subject would be discussed in the levity of convivial conversation, is a degree of absurdity beyond what is easily conceivable. Reyn. It is so, as you say, to be sure; I talked once to our friend Garrick upon this subject, but I remember we could make nothing of it. Johns. O noble pair! Reyn. Garrick was a clever fellow, Dr. J.: Garrick, take him altogether, was certainly a very great man. Johns. Garrick, sir, may be a great man in your opinion, so far as I know, but he was not so in mine; little things are great to little men. Reyn. I have heard you say, Dr. Johnson— Johns. Sir, you never heard me say that David Garrick was a great man; you may have heard me say that Garrick was a good repeater of other men's words words put into his mouth by other men: this makes but a faint approach towards being a great man. Reyn. But take Garrick upon the whole, now, in regard to conversation— Johns. Well, sir, in regard to conversation, I never discovered in the conversation of David Garrick any intellectual energy, any wide grasp of thought, any extensive comprehension of mind, or that he possessed any of those powers to which great could, with any degree of propriety, be applied. Reyn. But still— Johns. Hold, sir, I have not done there are, to be sure, in the laxity of colloquial speech, various kinds of greatness; a man may be a great tobacconist, a man may be a great painter, he may be likewise a great mimic: now you may be the one, and Garrick the other, and yet neither of you be great men. Reyn. But, Dr. Johnson— Johns. Hold, sir, I have often lamented how dangerous it is to investigate and to discriminate character, to men who have no discriminative powers. Reyn. But Garrick as a companion, I heard you say—no longer ago than last Wednesday, at Mr. Thrale's table— Johns. You tease me, sir. Whatever you may have heard me say, no longer ago than last Wednesday, at Mr. Thrale's table, I tell you I do not say so now: besides, as I said before, you may not have understood me, you misapprehended me, you may not have heard me. Reyn. I am very sure I heard you. Johns. Besides, besides, sir, besides,-do you not know,are you so ignorant as not to know, that it is the highest degree of rudeness to quote a man against himself? Reyn. But if you differ from yourself, and give one opinion to-day Johns. Have done, sir: the company you see are tired, as well as myself. (From Dialogues in Imitation of Dr. Johnson's Conversation.) ADAM SMITH [Born at Kirkcaldy, N. B., 1723, educated at Glasgow University (under Hutcheson) 1737-40, and at Balliol College, Oxford, 1740-47, he gave public lectures in Edinburgh on Rhetoric and Criticism, 1748-49,-lectures which bore fruit in the writings of Kames, Campbell, and Blair. In 1751 he became Professor of Logic, in 1752 Professor of Moral Philosophy, in Glasgow University. His first publications were two articles in the short-lived Edinburgh Review of 1755, but he made his reputation by his Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759. In 1763 Charles Townshend persuaded him to resign his chair, and go as travelling tutor into France and Switzerland with the young Duke of Buccleuch, 1763-66. He had thus greater leisure and opportunities to complete his crowning achievement, the Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776. In 1778 he was made a Commissioner of Customs for Scotland, holding office till his death, at Edinburgh, 1790.] "IF I have thoughts and can't express them, Jones teach me modesty and Greek, Smith how to think, Burke how to speak, These well-known verses of Dr. Barnard (in reply to Dr. Johnson's taunt, "There is great room for improvement in you, and you should set about it ") give the impression that Adam Smith is a philosopher and a critic rather than an artist. Yet in the early part of his life he owed much of his fame to the "fine writing" of his Moral Sentiments and lectures on art. His two critical papers in the Edinburgh Review (on Johnson's Dictionary and on the State of Learning in Europe) showed his learning and ingenuity more than his skill in rounding a period or unravelling a complicated subject, though he has evidently taken pains to perfect his two or three pages of translations from Rousseau in the latter paper. His literary masterpiece is the Moral Sentiments. It has far |