of grief. It is pleasant to observe how it penetrates through the coldness and awkwardness of society, gradually bringing men nearer together, and, like the combined force of wine and oil, giving every man a glad heart and a shining countenance. Genuine and innocent wit like this, is surely the flavor of the mind! Man could direct his ways by plain reason, and support his life by tasteless food; but God has given us wit, and flavor, and brightness, and laughter, and perfumes, to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to "charm his pained steps over the burning marle.

LECTURE XIL

ON TASTE.

ALL language which concerns the mind is borrowed from language which respects material objects.

The mind itself is called breath, wind, air, in almost all the languages of the world. Apprehension, comprehension, understanding, perception, are all metaphors taken from the human body, or from substance of some sort or another. The reason is plain: the attention of man is first called powerfully to outer objects; they are the first observed and the first named, they make the basis of all languages; and then, when men can turn their attention inwardly upon themselves, and want words for new ideas, they naturally borrow them from already existing language, and are determined in their choice by some fanciful analogy between the object of mind, and the object of body. This is exactly the case with taste. There are certain feelings of the mind which take place upon the perception of certain objects, or the contemplation of certain actions, which men have chosen to compare to the sensations of the palate upon the application of certain flavors. There is no reason, that I know of, why they should compare them to sensations excited by taste, rather than by smell or by touch. The feeling of beauty, excited by the view of a pleasant landscape, no more resembles any flavor which the palate can taste, than it resembles a soft and smooth object which the hand can touch: one metaphor has established itself, the other has not. We have begun, though of late years, to use the word tact; we say of such a man that he has a good tact in manners, that he has a fine tact, exactly as we would say he has a good taste. We might, in

familiar style, extend the metaphor to the sense of smelling, and say of a man that he had a good nose for the ridiculous.

Taste, then, is a metaphorical expression; and it is a mere word of classification, including several distinct feelings of the mind, exactly as the primary taste includes several distinct feelings of the body. It includes the feeling of beauty in all its very numerous meanings, the feeling of novelty, the feeling of grandeur, the feeling of sublimity, the feeling of propriety, and perhaps many others, which, in a subsequent part of my lecture, I shall take pains to enumerate.

Precisely in the same manner, the natural taste includes the taste of sweet, sour, hot, cold, moist, savory, and many others, which are so pleasantly exemplified every day in this great town; so that, when we use the word taste, we must recollect that there is no single feeling of the mind which has obtained that name, but that it is a classifying, comprehensive word, embracing a great number of distinct feelings. But why have we called all these feelings by the name of taste? and why have we denied the appellation of taste to other feelings of the mind? This is a very important question in the discussion, and I will endeavor to answer it hereafter; at present I pass it by for the sake of order and arrangement. It is very clear why we call all the various feelings of the palate by the name of taste,—simply because they originate from the same bodily organ, the palate : and this analogy has given rise to a very strange sort of language,—of the organ of taste;-as if there were any separate quarter of the mind set apart for the generation of these feelings. All that we know about the matter, is this: men have chosen to take a metaphor from the body, and apply it to the mind; they have chosen, for reasons hereafter to be conjectured, and from some remote resemblance, to class some feelings under the appellation of taste, others not. This is the plain history of the fact; further than this, is all metaphorical fallacy; and as for any separate organ of taste, there is either no meaning to the expression, or, if there be, it is impossible to ascertain the fact which the expression implies.

I shall now endeavor to state the various feelings which have been classed under this appellation, and the extent to which practice has extended and applied the metaphor of taste. It matters not which of the feelings I state first, and I do not think I shall give much offence by_beginning with that of beauty.

I do not mean to analyze the feeling of the beautiful (that I reserve for a separate lecture), but merely to state it as one of those feelings of the mind to which the metaphor of taste is applied. To talk first of the simplest and most uncompounded kinds of beauty. We say that gay colors are beautiful; that all children, or those muscular and robust children called savages, have a taste for beautiful colors, for smooth surfaces, for harmonious sounds, and for regular figures. We say of such a man, meaning to pay him a high compliment, that he has a good taste in the beauty of the person; of another, that he has a fine taste in architecture, meaning by the expression, that he feels the beauties of architecture in short, wherever we use the word beauty with any degree of strictness, we almost always refer it to the general class of taste. There is a lax usage of the word beautiful, which implies any thing that is agreeable or convenient. I have heard country gentlemen talk of a beautiful scenting-day; and Mrs. Glasse talks of a beautiful receipt for curing a ham; but this is evidently an analogical, and even a violent, usage of the word.

It is used to the sublime. We say of such a man, “He has not taste enough to relish the sublimity of the description;" or, "Such sublime scenery is quite to his

taste.

The metaphor of taste has never been much extended to novelty, though there are forms of language in which it would not be improper to apply it. Such continued novelty is not to my taste ;". I go into different societies, because I have a strong relish for novelty." However, the word does not seem so well placed here, and does not satisfy the ear so cleverly as in the preceding instances; and perhaps for this reason the word taste is most frequently and emphatically applied, both in its original, and in its figurative sense, in cases of some diffi

culty. If a man were to discover that vinegar was sour, we should give him no great credit for his natural taste. If any man were to discover the true language of nature and of feeling in this little poem of Mrs. Opie's, he would gain no credit for his metaphorical taste, because the beauties of it are too striking for a moment's hesitation :

'Go, youth beloved! in distant glades,

New friends, new hopes, new joys to find!
Yet sometimes deign, midst fairer maids,
To think on her thou leav'st behind.
Thy love, thy fate, dear youth, to share,
Must never be my happy lot;

But thou may'st grant this humble prayer,-
Forget me not, forget me not!

"Yet should the thought of my distress
Too painful to thy feelings be,

Heed not the wish I now express,
Nor ever deign to think of me.
But oh! if grief thy steps attend,
If want, if sickness, be thy lot,
And thou require a soothing friend,
Forget me not, forget me not !"*

For this very reason, the word taste has not been applied so often to novelty; because whether a thing be novel or not, is no question of critical inquiry, but of plain fact, which one man can answer to with as much satisfaction as another.

It is certainly applied to ridicule.

Dr. Gerard classes the pleasures of imitation under the head of taste, for it must be remembered there is a pleasure arising from mere imitation, whether the original be agreeable or not. We should be much pleased to see an accurate picture of the greatest beauty now living; and we should not be displeased to see the picture of a rat or a weasel: the mere imitation itself, abstracted from all other considerations, gives pleasure; but though this pleasure very much resembles those which are said. to be pleasures of taste, and though it ought, perhaps, from such resemblance, to be so classed, yet I doubt very much if it ever has been, or if custom has extended the

* Edinburgh Review, i. 116