Sensibility
Primarily developed in sentimental novels of the mid to late eighteenth century, the concept of sensibility was rooted in one’s susceptibility to aesthetic or emotional experiences, especially to pity, grief, and nostalgia. People of sensibility were thought to possess finely tuned natures that made them quick to sympathize with any victim of injustice and responsive to the full range of aesthetic possibility in art, music, literature, and landscape. When it came to landscape, sensibility was supposed to render one appreciative of the sublime and of the beautiful, and especially of the picturesque. Sensibility was also closely linked with the concept of aesthetic taste and judgment—a person of true sensibility was capable of appreciating art as well as natural beauty. The cult of sensibility, based as it was on a susceptibility of feeling for the sorrows of others, particularly those less fortunate, was tied to radical political movements, including critiques of imperialism, the abolition of slavery, and the French Revolution.
By the 1790s, there was a reaction against the excesses of sensibility, with Jane Austen’s at times satirical treatment of the subject being perhaps the most well-known example. While Romantic literature grew out of the cult of sensibility in many ways, it claimed to reject what S.T. Coleridge called sensibility’s “doleful egoism.”
Anonymous, Engraved Plate, The Man of Feeling, London: Thomas Tegg, c. 1810.
MacKenzie’s The Man of Feeling is widely considered to be the most popular and influential example of the sentimental novel, the popular eighteenth-century genre of fiction that formed and promulgated the cult of sensibility. The protagonist, Harley, became an emblematic figure of sensibility, embodying its ideals of deep feeling, sensitivity, and compassion. Harley meets many different characters throughout the narrative, including a discharged soldier, inmates of Bedlam, and a prostitute, all of whom tell their sympathetic stories of hardship, drawing tears and compassion from the protagonist. So many tears, in fact, are drawn throughout the book that an 1883 edition of the novel included an “Index of Tears,” recording 58 occasions on which the protagonist cries.
Chapter 13
The Man of Feeling in Love
The day before that on which he set out [for London, Harley] went to take leave of Mr. Walton [his neighbor]. We would conceal nothing; there was another person of the family to whom also the visit was intended, on whose account, perhaps, there were some tenderer feelings in the bosom of Harley than his gratitude for the friendly notice of that gentleman (though he was seldom deficient in that virtue) could inspire. Mr. Walton had a daughter; and such a daughter! we will attempt some description of her by and by.
Harley’s notions of the καλον, or beautiful, were not always to be defined, nor indeed such as the world would always assent to, though we could define them. A blush, a phrase of affability to an inferior, a tear at a moving tale, were to him, like the Cestus of Cytherea, unequalled in conferring beauty. For all these Miss Walton was remarkable; but as these, like the above-mentioned Cestus, are perhaps still more powerful when the wearer is possessed of some degree of beauty, commonly so called, it happened, that, from this cause, they had more than usual power in the person of that young lady.
She was now arrived at that period of life which takes, or is supposed to take, from the flippancy of girlhood those sprightlinesses with which some good-natured old maids oblige the world at three-score. She had been ushered into life (as that word is used in the dialect of St. James’s) at seventeen, her father being then in parliament, and living in London: at seventeen, therefore, she had been a universal toast; her health, now she was four-and-twenty, was only drank by those who knew her face at least. Her complexion was mellowed into a paleness, which certainly took from her beauty; but agreed, at least Harley used to say so, with the pensive softness of her mind. Her eyes were of that gentle hazel colour which is rather mild than piercing; and, except when they were lighted up by good-humour, which was frequently the case, were supposed by the fine gentlemen to want fire. Her air and manner were elegant in the highest degree, and were as sure of commanding respect as their mistress was far from demanding it. Her voice was inexpressibly soft; it was, according to that incomparable simile of Otway’s,
—like the shepherd’s pipe upon the mountains,
When all his little flock’s at feed before him.
The effect it had upon Harley, himself used to paint ridiculously enough; and ascribed it to powers, which few believed, and nobody cared for.
Her conversation was always cheerful, but rarely witty; and without the smallest affectation of learning, had as much sentiment in it as would have puzzled a Turk, upon his principles of female materialism, to account for. Her beneficence was unbounded; indeed the natural tenderness of her heart might have been argued, by the frigidity of a casuist, as detracting from her virtue in this respect, for her humanity was a feeling, not a principle: but minds like Harley’s are not very apt to make this distinction, and generally give our virtue credit for all that benevolence which is instinctive in our nature.
As her father had some years retired to the country, Harley had frequent opportunities of seeing her. He looked on her for some time merely with that respect and admiration which her appearance seemed to demand, and the opinion of others conferred upon her from this cause, perhaps, and from that extreme sensibility of which we have taken frequent notice, Harley was remarkably silent in her presence. He heard her sentiments with peculiar attention, sometimes with looks very expressive of approbation; but seldom declared his opinion on the subject, much less made compliments to the lady on the justness of her remarks.
From this very reason it was that Miss Walton frequently took more particular notice of him than of other visitors, who, by the laws of precedency, were better entitled to it: it was a mode of politeness she had peculiarly studied, to bring to the line of that equality, which is ever necessary for the ease of our guests, those whose sensibility had placed them below it.
Harley saw this; for though he was a child in the drama of the world, yet was it not altogether owing to a want of knowledge on his part; on the contrary, the most delicate consciousness of propriety often kindled that blush which marred the performance of it: this raised his esteem something above what the most sanguine descriptions of her goodness had been able to do; for certain it is, that notwithstanding the laboured definitions which very wise men have given us of the inherent beauty of virtue, we are always inclined to think her handsomest when she condescends to smile upon ourselves.
It would be trite to observe the easy gradation from esteem to love: in the bosom of Harley there scarce needed a transition; for there were certain seasons when his ideas were flushed to a degree much above their common complexion. In times not credulous of inspiration, we should account for this from some natural cause; but we do not mean to account for it at all; it were sufficient to describe its effects; but they were sometimes so ludicrous, as might derogate from the dignity of the sensations which produced them to describe. They were treated indeed as such by most of Harley’s sober friends, who often laughed very heartily at the awkward blunders of the real Harley, when the different faculties, which should have prevented them, were entirely occupied by the ideal. In some of these paroxysms of fancy, Miss Walton did not fail to be introduced; and the picture which had been drawn amidst the surrounding objects of unnoticed levity was now singled out to be viewed through the medium of romantic imagination: it was improved of course, and esteem was a word inexpressive of the feelings which it excited.
An aristocrat with little money, Harley is wary of social change and particularly of commerce and trade, a wariness which he extends to the imperial project of extorting wealth from colonial holdings. In the following excerpt, he demonstrates his sensibility in imagining the effect of colonization upon the colonized in India:
from A Fragment.
The Man of Feeling Talks of What He Does Not Understand.—An Incident
“Edwards,” said he, “I … cannot throw off the man so much as to rejoice at our conquests in India. You tell me of immense territories subject to the English: I cannot think of their possessions without being led to inquire by what right they possess them. They came there as traders, bartering the commodities they brought for others which their purchasers could spare; and however great their profits were, they were then equitable. But what title have the subjects of another kingdom to establish an empire in India? to give laws to a country where the inhabitants received them on the terms of friendly commerce? You say they are happier under our regulations than under the tyranny of their own petty princes. I must doubt it, from the conduct of those by whom these regulations have been made. They have drained the treasuries of Nabobs, who must fill them by oppressing the industry of their subjects. Nor is this to be wondered at, when we consider the motive upon which those gentlemen do not deny their going to India. The fame of conquest, barbarous as that motive is, is but a secondary consideration [to gaining wealth]. …When shall I see a commander return from India in the pride of honourable poverty? You describe the victories they have gained; they are sullied by the cause in which they fought: you enumerate the spoils of those victories; they are covered with the blood of the vanquished.
“Could you tell me of some conqueror giving peace and happiness to the conquered? … did he use his power to gain security and freedom to the regions of oppression and slavery? did he endear the British name by examples of generosity?”
Burns’s poem exhibits the pity and tenderness towards others—human and non-human—that is characteristic of a person of sensibility.
To a Mouse
Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickerin’ brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!
I’m truly sorry man’s dominion
Has broken nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!
I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave
’S a sma’ request:
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss’t!
Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,
Baith snell an’ keen!
Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’s weary winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.
That wee-bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the Winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld!
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!
Sensibility, how charming,
Dearest Nancy, thou canst tell;
But distress, with horrors arming,
Thou alas! hast known too well!
Fairest flower, behold the lily
Blooming in the sunny ray:
Let the blast sweep o’er the valley,
See it prostrate in the clay.
Hear the woodlark charm the forest,
Telling o’er his little joys;
But alas! a prey the surest
To each pirate of the skies.
Dearly bought the hidden treasure
Finer feelings can bestow:
Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure
Thrill the deepest notes of woe.
There seems to be a fashion in virtue as well as in vice. There was a time when learning was the fashion among the ladies at court, and the hours which are now spent by them under the hair-dresser, were devoted to the perusal of Plato in the original language. Chastity was once the pride of all who aimed at the character of people of fashion, and courage, honour, generosity, gravity, and heroism, the ornaments ambitiously pursued by courtiers and fine gentlemen.
The quality chiefly affected of late is sensibility; and the affectation has been greatly encreased, if not introduced by the taste for novels. The sentimental comedies, and the affecting tragedies in which love and the distresses it occasions when disappointed, are feelingly described, have also contributed greatly to diffuse it.
When it is genuine, and not increased to a degree of weakness and effeminacy, it is certainly amiable. True tenderness or compassion is one of the most honourable distinctions of human nature. He who cannot feel as a man when an object presents itself naturally formed to affect the human heart, displays a disposition not only odious, but such as may lead him to actual and premeditated cruelty.
But while I honour the reality, I must despise the affectation. And there is reason to suspect that much of the sensibility of which we hear and read, is affected, because it seems to operate partially and ostentatiously. It seems to display itself chiefly in gallantry, and in such acts of pity as are likely to be known, celebrated, and admired in the realms of fashion. If any lady or lady-like gentleman can find at a watering place a distress similar to any thing in some fashionable novel, it is surprising with what pathos it will be described, and with what assiduity relieved; but if a distress equally afflicting occurs in the obscure village where the mansion-house stands, no notice is taken of it, or no more than a regard to common decency requires. The reason seems to be a fear that the case is so obscure that the sensibility which alleviates it will never reach the ears of those who tread the paths of fashionable folly.
And if a gross passion operating in a corrupted heart prompts to an unlawful amour, it is often obeyed by the parties with little shame, and with a great deal of complacency and self congratulation, on their being possessed of such a sensibility, which irresistibly tempts them to say,
Curse on all laws save those which love has made.
Bad passions, and bad actions the consequence of them, have always been common, and will continue to be so in the present condition of human nature; but to boast of them as doing honour to the heart, under the name of lovely and delicate Sensibility, is peculiar to the fashionable of the present age. Mr. Sterne and Mrs. Draper have too many imitators. A goat is a personage of as great sensibility and sentiment as most of them.
If the pretenders to extraordinary sensibility really possess it in a degree which renders its fine impulses utterly irresistible, why does it not appear uniformly, and in other affairs as well as those of love? The Christian religion recommends charity and universal benevolence; but the persons who aim at the epithet fashionable as the most enviable distinction of humanity, are by no means equally zealous to obtain the character of good Christians. Many of them, I believe, affect the character of possessing too much sense to be seduced by any thing which they call a popular mode of superstition. When they are at their seats in country villages, and far from the tribe whose admiration they seek, do these persons of exquisite sensibility employ their time in seeking objects of compassion in the cottages of poverty and misery, and their money in the diffusion of comfort? Alas! they too often take the opportunity of practising a most rigid economy at home, to the exclusion of all bounty, that they may have abundance at the next Bath season. Charitable subscriptions are indeed very common at Bath, Brighthelmstone, and Tunbridge, and many are delighted in setting down their names, not forgetting their titles; but is there not in the mean time many a poor family pining in want near their houses and estates at home, who never receive any thing from them, because there is no subscription-book, no master of the ceremonies, and none of the fraternity of fashion to observe.
Does the sensibility to which they pretend in love display itself towards their husbands, wives, children, and in all the tender charities of private life? I rather doubt it, because I observe that Lady ——, so celebrated for her sensibility, is separated from her husband, and never sees her children; because Sir —— never gives a farthing of the fortune he acquired in the East Indies to his poor relations; because my Lord —— is never at home, where he has a most amiable wife who pines in solitude, and in vain laments his absence. Is it necessary, to the excitement or gratification of this boasted sensibility, that the object should be unlawful or clandestine? If so, and experience seems to prove it so, it can have no pretensions to praise; for it is inconsistent with honour and generosity.
True sensibility, equally remote from weakness and affectation, will feel the sentiments of devotion with no less vivacity than those of love. It will, I believe, be oftener warmed with an attachment to virtue than to vice. It will be delicate and reserved, rather than forward, noisy, and ostentatious. But has the sensibility which is assumed at public places, or by the slaves of fashion, any of these characteristics? Is it not, on the contrary, rather inclined to libertinism in religious principle, very far from scrupulous in moral conduct, bold, busy, and conceited? It has indeed every appearance of vanity; and, if there were not danger of confounding it with real sensibility, the honour of our nature, it ought to be universally exploded with ridicule.
That sensibility alone which produces piety to God and benevolence to man has the indisputable mark of a genuine excellence. Vice and vanity will produce the other sort, which has every sign of a counterfeit, and like the base coin which, in the hands of the interested, is taught to emulate gold, ought, if possible, to be cried down by public authority. It too often passes current in the world, not without great injury to society: for honour paid to false virtue robs the true of its just right, and contributes, by lessening the rewards of truth, to discourage its appearance.
Charlotte Smith wrote many poems that trace the sublime beauty of nature, particularly the sea, as well as nightscapes and thunderstorms; she pairs these vast scenes with careful attention to smaller wonders, such as specific flowers and animals. Her observations of these phenomena often reflect the feelings of the poem’s speaker, revealing her to be a person of sensibility, taste, and turbulent emotion.
I love thee, mournful, sober-suited Night!
When the faint Moon, yet lingering in her wane,
And veil’d in clouds, with pale uncertain light
Hangs o’er the waters of the restless main.
In deep depression sunk, the enfeebled mind
Will to the deaf cold elements complain,
And tell the embosom’d grief, however vain,
To sullen surges and the viewless wind.
Tho’ no repose on thy dark breast I find,
I still enjoy thee—cheerless as thou art;
For in thy quiet gloom the exhausted heart
Is calm, tho’ wretched; hopeless, yet resign’d.
While to the winds and waves its sorrows given,
May reach—tho’ lost on earth—the ear of Heaven!
’Tis pleasant to wander along on the sand,
Beneath the high cliff that is hallowed in caves;
When the fisher has put off his boat from the land,
And the prawn-catcher wades thro’ the short rippling waves.
While fast run before us the sandling and plover,
Intent on the crabs and the sand-eels to feed,
And here on a rock which the tide will soon cover,
We’ll find us a seat that is tapestried with weed.
Bright gleam the white sails in the slant rays of even,
And stud as with silver the broad level main,
While glowing clouds float on the fair face of Heaven,
And the mirror-like water reflects them again.
How various the shades of marine vegetation,
Thrown here the rough flints and the pebbles among,
The feather’d conferva of deepest carnation,
The dark purple slake and the olive sea thong.
While Flora herself unreluctantly mingles
Her garlands with those that the Nereids have worn,
For the yellow horned poppy springs up on the shingles,
And convolvulas rival the rays of the morn.
But now to retire from the rock we have warning,
Already the water encircles our seat,
And slowly the tide of the evening returning,
The moon beams reflects in the waves at our feet.
Ah! whether as now the mild Summer sea flowing,
Scarce wrinkles the sands as it murmurs on shore,
Or fierce wintry whirlwinds impetuously blowing
Bid high maddening surges resistlessly roar;
That Power, which can put the wide waters in motion,
Then bid the vast billows repose at His word;
Fills the mind with deep reverence, while Earth, Air, and Ocean,
Alike of the universe speak him the Lord.
In 1795, Mary Wollstonecraft traveled with her one-year-old daughter Fanny through Scandinavia. The letters in this volume were composed for publication as a travel narrative and memoir; the text is drawn from her journals and from letters she had sent to her lover, Gilbert Imlay (1754–1828), while in Scandinavia.
Wollstonecraft’s impressions of Scandinavia were very well received. The letters are notable not only for their beautiful descriptions of sublime and picturesque landscapes, but for their tracing of those landscapes’ effects on the mind of a person of sensibility and taste (in this case, Wollstonecraft). In the following excerpt, Wollstonecraft visits a waterfall near Frederikstad, Norway.
from Letter 15
I have often mentioned the grandeur, but I feel myself unequal to the task of conveying an idea of the beauty and elegance of the scene when the spiral tops of the pines are loaded with ripening seed, and the sun gives a glow to their light green tinge, which is changing into purple, one tree more or less advanced, contrasted with another. The profusion with which Nature has decked them, with pendant honours, prevents all surprise at seeing, in every crevice, some sapling struggling for existence. Vast masses of stone are thus encircled; and roots, torn up by the storms, become a shelter for a young generation. The pine and fir woods, left entirely to nature, display an endless variety; and the paths in the woods are not entangled with fallen leaves, which are only interesting whilst they are fluttering between life and death. The grey cobweb-like appearance of the aged pines is a much finer image of decay; the fibres whitening as they lose their moisture, imprisoned life seems to be stealing away. I cannot tell why—but death, under every form, appears to me like something getting free—to expand in I know not what element; nay, I feel that this conscious being must be as unfettered, have the wings of thought, before it can be happy.
Reaching the cascade, or rather cataract, the roaring of which had a long time announced its vicinity, my soul was hurried by the falls into a new train of reflections. The impetuous dashing of the rebounding torrent from the dark cavities which mocked the exploring eye, produced an equal activity in my mind: my thoughts darted from earth to heaven, and I asked myself why I was chained to life and its misery? Still the tumultuous emotions this sublime object excited, were pleasurable; and, viewing it, my soul rose, with renewed dignity, above its cares—grasping at immortality—it seemed as impossible to stop the current of my thoughts, as of the always varying, still the same, torrent before me—I stretched out my hand to eternity, bounding over the dark speck of life to come.
We turned with regret from the cascade. On a little hill, which commands the best view of it, several obelisks are erected to commemorate the visits of different kings. The appearance of the river above and below the falls is very picturesque, the ruggedness of the scenery disappearing as the torrent subsides into a peaceful stream. But I did not like to see a number of saw-mills crowded together close to the cataracts; they destroyed the harmony of the prospect.
The sight of a bridge erected across a deep valley, at a little distance, inspired very dissimilar sensations. It was most ingeniously supported by mast-like trunks, just stripped of their branches; and logs, placed one across the other, produced an appearance equally light and firm, seeming almost to be built in the air when we were below it, the height taking from the magnitude of the supporting trees give them a slender graceful look….
In this etching, Gillray satirizes Matthew Gregory Lewis’s Tales of Wonder (1801), a collection of Gothic ballads that Lewis described as a “hobgoblin repast.” Gillray also satirizes the women reading the book, highlighting what was at the time a commonplace association between Gothic literature and women readers. Across the top of the print is written, “This attempt to describe the effects of the Sublime & Wonderful is dedicated to M G Lewis Esq MP.”
The Gothic developed out of, and plays on, many of the same elements as the cult of sensibility—a taste for picturesque architecture, a susceptibility of emotion, and a sensitivity to the sublime. The popularity of Lewis’s most famous novel, The Monk (1796), along with its perceived immoral tendencies, made Lewis the subject of satire and significant censure, as when Coleridge wrote that “the Monk is a romance, which if a parent saw in the hands of a son or daughter, he might reasonably turn pale.”
William Cowper—along with Charlotte Smith, James Thomson, and Thomas Gray—ushered in what is known as the poetry of sensibility, marking a distinct shift away from the neoclassical ideals that had shaped earlier eighteenth-century poetry.
“The Castaway” epitomizes the acute feelings, the compassion for suffering, and the compelling human drama that we associate with the movement toward sensibility.
Obscurest night involv’d the sky,
Th’ Atlantic billows roar’d,
When such a destin’d wretch as I,
Wash’d headlong from on board,
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
His floating home for ever left.
No braver chief could Albion boast
Than he with whom he went,
Nor ever ship left Albion’s coast,
With warmer wishes sent.
He lov’d them both, but both in vain,
Nor him beheld, nor her again.
Not long beneath the whelming brine,
Expert to swim, he lay;
Nor soon he felt his strength decline,
Or courage die away;
But wag’d with death a lasting strife,
Supported by despair of life.
He shouted: nor his friends had fail’d
To check the vessel’s course,
But so the furious blast prevail’d,
That, pitiless perforce,
They left their outcast mate behind,
And scudded still before the wind.
Some succour yet they could afford;
And, such as storms allow,
The cask, the coop, the floated cord,
Delay’d not to bestow.
But he (they knew) nor ship, nor shore,
Whate’er they gave, should visit more.
Nor, cruel as it seem’d, could he
Their haste himself condemn,
Aware that flight, in such a sea,
Alone could rescue them;
Yet bitter felt it still to die
Deserted, and his friends so nigh.
He long survives, who lives an hour
In ocean, self-upheld;
And so long he, with unspent pow’r,
His destiny repell’d;
And ever, as the minutes flew,
Entreated help, or cried—Adieu!
At length, his transient respite past,
His comrades, who before
Had heard his voice in ev’ry blast,
Could catch the sound no more.
For then, by toil subdued, he drank
The stifling wave, and then he sank.
No poet wept him: but the page
Of narrative sincere;
That tells his name, his worth, his age,
Is wet with Anson’s tear.
And tears by bards or heroes shed
Alike immortalize the dead.
I therefore purpose not, or dream,
Descanting on his fate,
To give the melancholy theme
A more enduring date:
But misery still delights to trace
Its semblance in another’s case.
No voice divine the storm allay’d,
No light propitious shone;
When, snatch’d from all effectual aid,
We perish’d, each alone:
But I beneath a rougher sea,
And whelm’d in deeper gulfs than he.
Celestial spring! to Nature’s favourites giv’n,
Fed by the dews that bathe the flow’rs of heav’n:
From the pure crystal of thy fountain flow
The tears that trickle o’er another’s woe;
The silent drop that calms our own distress;
The gush of rapture at a friend’s success;
Thine the soft show’rs down Beauty’s breast that steal,
To sooth the heart-wounds they can never heal:
Thine too the tears of ecstacy that roll,
When Genius rushes on the ravish’d soul;
And thine the hallow’d flood that drowns the eye,
When warm Religion lifts the thought on high.
In this satirical print, Rowlandson suggests that “men of feeling” may occasionally have ulterior motives, and this pun on “feeling” appears in several cartoons of this period. Here, an old parson gropes a young woman who is visiting him in his college room. Signs of some “sensibility” are present in the room, including a violin, books, and a statuette of a nymph undressing.
The traveler in this image is taking in the sublime landscape of the Alps, a popular destination for those on the Grand Tour: a long period of European travel that was considered an important formative educational experience for young aristocratic men. Tourists, whether abroad or traveling at home in England, were able to confirm themselves as people of taste and sensibility by recording their impressions upon experiencing sublime and picturesque landscapes.
Sensibility and taste were refinements considered desirable in young women—within certain bounds of propriety and virtue. This image shows a girl learning to paint and draw, one of the “accomplishments” taught to upper-class young women as part of their education.
Taste is nothing but sensibility to the different degrees and kinds of excellence, in the works of art or nature. This definition will perhaps be disputed; for I am aware the general practice is to make it consist in a disposition to find fault.
A French man or woman will in general conclude their account of Voltaire’s denunciation of Shakespeare and Milton as barbarians, on the score of certain technical improprieties, with assuring you, that “he (Voltaire) had a great deal of taste.” It is their phrase, Il aroit beaucoup du gout. To which the proper answer is, that that might be; but that he did not shew it in this case; as the overlooking great and countless beauties, and being taken up only with petty or accidental blemishes, shews as little strength of understanding as it does refinement or elevation of taste. The French author, indeed, allows of Shakespeare, that “he had found a few pearls on his enormous dunghill.” But there is neither truth nor proportion in this sentence, for his works are (to say the least)
Rich as the oozy bottom of the sea,
With sunken wrack and sunless treasuries.
Genius is the power of producing excellence: taste is the power of perceiving the excellence thus produced in its several sorts and degrees, with all their force, refinement, distinctions, and connections. In other words, taste (as it relates to the productions of art) is strictly the power of being properly affected by works of genius. It is the proportioning admiration to power, pleasure to beauty: it is entire sympathy with the finest impulses of the imagination, not antipathy, not indifference to them. The eye of taste may be said to reflect the impressions of real genius, as the even mirror reflects the objects of nature, in all their clearness and lustre, instead of distorting or diminishing them;
Or like a gate of steel,
Fronting the sun, receives and renders back
His figure and his heat.
To take a pride and pleasure in nothing but defects (and those perhaps of the most paltry, obvious, and mechanical kind)—in the disappointment and tarnishing of our faith in substantial excellence, in the proofs of weakness, not of power, (and this where there are endless subjects to feed the mind with wonder and increased delight through years of patient thought and fond remembrance,) is not a sign of uncommon refinement, but of unaccountable perversion of taste. So, in the case of Voltaire’s hypercriticisms on Milton and Shakespeare, the most common-place and prejudiced admirer of these authors knows, as well as Voltaire can tell him, that it is a fault to make a sea-port (we will say) in Bohemia, or to introduce artillery and gunpowder in the war in Heaven. This is common to Voltaire, and the merest English reader: there is nothing in it either way. But what he differs from us in, and, as it is supposed, greatly to his advantage, and to our infinite shame and mortification, is, that this is all that he perceives, or will hear of in Milton or Shakespeare, and that he either knows, or pretends to know, nothing of that prodigal waste, or studied accumulation of grandeur, truth, and beauty, which are to be found in each of these authors. Now, I cannot think, that, to be dull and insensible to so great and such various excellence—to have no feeling in unison with it, no latent suspicion of the treasures hid beneath our feet, and which we trample upon with ignorant scorn, to be cut off as by a judicial blindness, from that universe of thought and imagination that shifts its wondrous pageant before us, to turn aside from the throng and splendour of airy shapes that fancy weaves for our dazzled sight, and to strut and vapour over a little pettifogging blunder in geography or chronology, which a school-boy, or a village pedagogue, would be ashamed to insist upon, is any proof of the utmost perfection of taste, but the contrary. … We sometimes meet with individuals who have formed their whole character on this maxim, and who ridiculously affect a decided and dogmatical tone of superiority over others, from an uncommon degree both of natural and artificial stupidity. They are blind to painting—deaf to music—indifferent to poetry; and they triumph in the catalogue of their defects as the fault of these arts, because they have not sense enough to perceive their own want of perception. To treat any art or science with contempt, is only to prove your own incapacity and want of taste for it[.] … The only excuse for the over-delicacy and supercilious indifference here described, is when it arises from an intimate acquaintance with, and intense admiration of, other and higher degrees of perfection and genius. A person whose mind has been worked up to a lofty pitch of enthusiasm in this way, cannot perhaps condescend to notice, or be much delighted with inferior beauties; but then neither will he dwell upon, and be preposterously offended with, slight faults. So that the ultimate and only conclusive proof of taste is even here not indifference, but enthusiasm; and before a critic can give himself airs of superiority for what he despises, he must first lay himself open to reprisals, by telling us what he admires. There we may fairly join issue with him. Without this indispensable condition of all true taste, absolute stupidity must be more than on a par with the most exquisite refinement[.] …
Instead of making a disposition to find fault a proof of taste, I would reverse the rule, and estimate every one’s pretensions to taste by the degree of their sensibility to the highest and most various excellence. An indifference to less degrees of excellence is only excusable, as it arises from a knowledge and admiration of higher ones; and a readiness in the detection of faults should pass for refinement only as it is owing to a quick sense and impatient love of beauties. In a word, true taste consists in sympathy, not in antipathy; and the rejection of what is bad is only to be accounted a virtue when it implies a preference of and attachment to what is better.
There is a certain point, which may be considered as the highest point of perfection at which the human faculties can arrive in the conception and execution of certain things: to be able to reach this point in reality is the greatest proof of genius and power; and I imagine that the greatest proof of taste is given in being able to appreciate it when done. …To be dazzled by admiration of the greatest excellence, and of the highest works of genius, is natural to the best capacities, and the best natures; envy and dulness are most apt to detect minute blemishes and unavoidable inequalities, as we see the spots in the sun by having its rays blunted by mist or smoke. It may be asked, then, whether mere extravagance and enthusiasm are proofs of taste? And I answer, no, where they are without reason and knowledge. Mere sensibility is not true taste, but sensibility to real excellence is. To admire and be wrapt up in what is trifling or absurd, is a proof of nothing but ignorance or affectation: on the contrary, he who admires most what is most worthy of admiration, (let his raptures or his eagerness to express them be what they may,) shows himself neither extravagant nor “unwise.” …
In this image, a man and woman in the foreground look toward Salisbury Cathedral in the background. The man gestures toward the cathedral with his walking stick, perhaps making an impression on his companion by exhibiting his sensibility to the architecture.
This mezzotint is based on Constable’s painting of Hadleigh Castle, a painting Constable liked on account of what he termed its “melancholy grandeur.” Scenes such as this were appreciated by people of sensibility for their sublimity, and for the ecstatic feelings they evoked in the viewer.