the want of an exact knowledge in the formation of a shoe.  A fine piece of a decollated head of St. John the Baptist was shown to a Turkish emperor:  he praised many things, but he observed one defect:  he observed that the skin did not shrink from the wounded part of the neck.  The sultan on this occasion, though his observation was very just, discovered no more natural taste than the painter who executed this piece, or than a thousand European connoisseurs, who probably never would have made the same observation.  His Turkish majesty had indeed been well acquainted with that terrible spectacle, which the others could only have represented in their imagination.  On the subject of their dislike there is a difference between all these people, arising from the different kinds and degrees of their knowledge; but there is something in common to the painter, the shoemaker, the anatomist, and the Turkish emperor, the pleasure arising from a natural object, so far as each perceives it justly imitated; the satisfaction in seeing an agreeable figure; the sympathy proceeding from a striking and affecting incident.  So far as taste is natural, it is nearly common to all.

In poetry, and other pieces of imagination, the same parity may be observed.  It is true, that one man is charmed with Don Bellianis, and reads Virgil coldly; whilst another is transported with the AEneid, and leaves Don Bellianis to children.  These two men seem to have a taste very different from each other; but in fact they differ very little.  In both these pieces, which inspire such opposite sentiments, a tale exciting admiration is told; both are full of action, both are passionate; in both are voyages, battles, triumphs, and continual changes of fortune.  The admirer of Don Bellianis perhaps does not understand the refined language of the AEneid, who, if it was degraded into the style of the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” might feel it in all its energy, on the same principle which made him an admirer of Don Bellianis.

In his favorite author he is not shocked with the continual breaches of probability, the confusion of times, the offences against manners, the trampling upon geography; for he knows nothing of geography and chronology, and he has never examined the grounds of probability.  He perhaps reads of a shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia:  wholly taken up with so interesting an event, and only solicitous for the fate of his hero, he is not in the least troubled at this extravagant blunder.  For why should he be shocked at a shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia, who does not know but that Bohemia may be an island in the Atlantic ocean? and after all, what reflection is this on the natural good taste of the person here supposed?