It is likewise necessary for a Man who would form to himself a finished Taste of good Writing, to be well versed in the Works of the best Criticks both Ancient and Modern.  I must confess that I could wish there were Authors of this kind, who beside the Mechanical Rules which a Man of very little Taste may discourse upon, would enter into the very Spirit and Soul of fine Writing, and shew us the several Sources of that Pleasure which rises in the Mind upon the Perusal of a noble Work.  Thus although in Poetry it be absolutely necessary that the Unities of Time, Place and Action, with other Points of the same Nature, should be thoroughly explained and understood; there is still something more essential to the Art, something that elevates and astonishes the Fancy, and gives a Greatness of Mind to the Reader, which few of the Criticks besides Longinus have considered.

Our general Taste in England is for Epigram, Turns of Wit, and forced Conceits, which have no manner of Influence, either for the bettering or enlarging the Mind of him who reads them, and have been carefully avoided by the greatest Writers, both among the Ancients and Moderns.  I have endeavoured in several of my Speculations to banish this Gothic Taste, which has taken Possession among us.  I entertained the Town, for a Week together, with an Essay upon Wit, in which I endeavoured to detect several of those false Kinds which have been admired in the different Ages of the World; and at the same time to shew wherein the Nature of true Wit consists.  I afterwards gave an Instance of the great Force which lyes in a natural Simplicity of Thought to affect the Mind of the Reader, from such vulgar Pieces as have little else besides this single Qualification to recommend them.  I have likewise examined the Works of the greatest Poet which our Nation or perhaps any other has produced, and particularized most of those rational and manly Beauties which give a Value to that Divine Work.  I shall next Saturday enter upon an Essay on the Pleasures of the Imagination, which, though it shall consider that Subject at large, will perhaps suggest to the Reader what it is that gives a Beauty to many Passages of the finest Writers both in Prose and Verse.  As an Undertaking of this Nature is entirely new, I question not but it will be received with Candour.

O.

[Footnote 1:  See note on p. 620, ante [Footnote 3 of No. 379].  This fine taste was the ‘cultismo’, the taste for false concepts, which Addison condemns.]

* * * * *

No. 410.  Friday, June 20, 1712.  Tickell.

  ’Dum foris sunt, nihil videtur Mundius,
  Nec magis compositum quidquam, nec magis elegans: 
  Quae, cum amatore suo cum coenant, Liguriunt,
  Harum videre ingluviem, sordes, inopiam: 
  Quam inhonestae solae sint domi, atque avidae cibi,
  Quo pacto ex Jure Hesterno panem atrum varent. 
  Nosse omnia haec, salus est adolescentulis.’