ON RHETORIC AND BELLES-LETTRES, REDUCED TO QUESTION and ANSWER. BY REV. JOHN MARSH. HARTFORD, PUBLISHED BY SAMUEL G. GOODRICH. .... (L.S) District of Connecticut, ss. BE IT REMEMBERED, That on the sixth day of June, in the forty-fourth year of the Independence of the United States of America, Samuel G. Goodrich, of the said district, hath deposited in this Office the title of a book, the right whereof he claims as proprietor, in the words following, to wit: "Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres, "reduced to Question and Answer. By Rev. "John Marsh." In conformity to the Act of the Congress of the United States, entitled, An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of Maps, Charts and Books. to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned." CHAS. A. INGERSOLL, Clerk of the District of Connecticut. A true copy of record, examined and sealed by me, CHAS. A. INGERSOLL, Clerk of the District of Connecticut. BLAIR'S LECTURES ON RHETORIC AND BELLES-LETTRES. TASTE. Q. WHAT is Taste? A. The power of receiving pleasure or pain from the beauties or deformities of nature and of art. Q. Is it a faculty common to all men? Q. How do the rudiments of Taste discover themselves in children? A. In their fondness for regular bodies, and in their admiration of pictures and sta tues. Q. How, in savages of the wilderness? A. In their ornaments of dress, their war and their death songs, their harangues and their orators. 2. Do all men possess the faculty of Taste, in the same degree? A. In some men only, faint glimmerings of it are visible; beauties of the coarsest kind only are discerned and relished by them; ; while, in others, taste rises to an acute discernment, and a lively enjoyment of beauties the most refined. Q. To what is this inequality to be attributed? A. In part, to the different frame of their natures, but chiefly, to culture and education. Q. How does it appear that Taste is an improveable faculty? A. From the immense superiority of civilized over barbarous nations, in refinement of Taste; and of those who have stadied the liberal arts, over the rude and untaught, in the same nation. Q. How does Taste receive its improve ment? A. By frequent exercise; and the applica tion of good sense and reason, to the objects of Taste. Q. What are the characters of good Taste ? A. Delicacy and correctness. Q. What does Delicacy of Taste respect ? A. The protection of that natural sensibiliwhen Caste is founded Wine docs Correctness of Taste res 1 rapavement which that faculty Roles in its contagion with de wa Q. In what is the power of each chiefly seen? A. In discerning the true merit of a work; and in rejecting false pretensions to merit. Delicacy leans more to feeling; Correctness more to judgment. The former is chiefly the gift of nature; the latter the product of culture and art. Q. Upon what is Taste built? A. Upon sentiments and perceptions which belong to our nature. Q. What occasions a corrupt Taste? A. The perversion of these sentiments and perceptions by ignorance and prejudice. What is the standard of good Taste? corrupted. Q. What two works have been approved of throughout ages, and become standards of poetical composition? A. The Iliad of Homer, and the Eneid of Virgil. |