TASTE. 



533 



might have been, in part, owing to his uniform 

 hatred against the Spaniards, with whom the 

 duke was sometimes at war, sometimes at peace. 

 Tassoni has been accused, not without reason, of 

 writing some philippics, (filippiche) against the 

 Spaniards, and likewise a treatise entitled Le Ese- 

 quie della Mbnarchia di Spagna, although he posi- 

 tively denied the authorship of them. In 1623, he 

 left the service of the duke, and devoted himself 

 for three years to study and the cultivation of 

 flowers, of which he was very fond. At that time, 

 he probably completed a work previously com- 

 menced (// Compendia del Baronio}, which he be- 

 gan in Latin, but afterwards executed in Italian. 

 In 1626, his condition was improved. Cardinal 

 Ludovisio, a nephew of Gregory XV., received him 

 into his service upon advantageous terms. After 

 the death of the cardinal, in 1632, Tassoni entered, 

 with the title of counsellor, into the service of his 

 native prince, duke Francis I. He received an 

 honourable allowance, and resided at court, but 

 enjoyed this good fortune for three years only, 

 when he died, in 1635. The fame of Tassoni is 

 owing, not to the works already enumerated, but to 

 a comic-epic poem, under the title La Secchia ru- 

 pita, which first appeared in 1622, and was pub- 

 lished by him, probably for particular reasons, as the 

 production of his youth, although the careful finish 

 of the versification bears the stamp of mature age. 

 The subject of the poem is the war of the Modonese 

 and Bolognese, in the middle of the thirteenth cen- 

 tury. In this war, the bucket of a well was re- 

 moved from the city by the Modonese, who had 

 penetrated into Bologna, and conveyed as a trophy 

 to Modena, where it is preserved as a memorial to 

 the present day. This event, and the fruitless ef- 

 forts of the Bolognese to recover the lost bucket, 

 Tassoni relates in twelve burlesque epic cantos, 

 characterized by the spirit and grace of Ariosto, and 

 breathing in some places an epic grandeur. The 

 language has the genuine Tuscan character, and the 

 versification is easy and agreeable. If this poem 

 has met the fate of Hudibras, the reason, in both 

 cases, is the same ; namely, that the interest of the 

 circumstances has passed away with the time in 

 which the poem was written, so that many allu- 

 sions, which constitute the very spirit of tht poem, 

 and at the time of its publication were easily un- 

 derstood, can now be made intelligible only by means 

 of copious notes. 



TASTE, in physiology; one of the five senses, 

 by which are perceived certain impressions made by 

 particles of bodies dissolved by the saliva on the 

 tongue or the other contiguous parts of the body 

 endowed with this sense. As has been already ob- 

 served in the article Senses, taste does not appear 

 to be confined to the tongue, that member being 

 wanting in many animals which do not seem destitute 

 of the sense, and, in many which have a tongue, 

 this member, from its structure, is not adapted to 

 receive impressions from objects of taste. Again, 

 it is not the whole surface of the human tongue, 

 according to some late experiments, which is capa- 

 ble of those impressions that we ascribe to taste. 

 By covering the tongue with parchment, sometimes 

 in whole, and sometimes in different parts, two ex- 

 perimenters in Paris (MM. Guyot and Admyraula) 

 found, that the end and sides of the tongue, and a 

 small space at the root of it, together with a small 

 surface at the anterior and superior part of the 

 rof of the palate, are the only portions of surface 

 in the c.ivit v of the mouth and throat that can dis- 



tinguish taste or sapidity from mere touch. A 

 portion of extract of aloes, placed at any other part, 

 gives no sensation but that of touch, until the saliva 

 carries a solution of the sapid matters to those parts 

 of the cavity.* (See Tongue.} The little glands 

 of the tongue dissolve the salts contained in articles 

 of food, which, when dissolved, penetrate into the 

 three nerves on each side of the tongue, that are 

 connected with the brain and spinal marrow. Thus 

 we receive those sensations which we call sweet, 

 sour, bitter, sharp, insipid, astringent, and number- 

 less others, which, though we have no names for 

 them, yet are very distinct, as they enable us to 

 recognise particular objects. The impressions thus 

 received we ascribe to the objects that excite them, 

 though acidity is, properly speaking, not more a 

 quality of vinegar than pain is of the whip or spur- 

 the word taste thus comes to be applied to the 

 things which excite it ; and we say, sugar tastes 

 sweet with the same propriety or impropriety that 

 we say, a flower smells sweet, a bird looks black. 

 This confusion of cause and effect, in common 

 language, is very natural, in fact unavoidable, con- 

 sidering the way in which language is forffed. We 

 possess very few words to designate the endless 

 variety of tastes, of which we are very sensible. 

 In this respect taste is similar to hearing. Though 

 we all know how to distinguish a tune on the piano 

 from the same on the guitar, it is impossible to ex- 

 plain distinctly why or how. Our capability of 

 expressing tastes is, however, much greater than 

 of expressing smells. Taste and smell are very 

 closely connected, the loss of one being accompanied 

 with the loss of the other. (See Smell.) Many 

 words, designating impressions on the one sense, 

 are used also for those received from the other, and 

 flavour is daily applied to both. A sweet smell is a 

 very common phrase ; and in Thuringia the com- 

 mon people say the nosegay tastes sweet. In respect 

 to aesthetics, taste signifies that faculty by which 

 we judge of the beautiful and proper, and distin- 

 guish them from the ugly and unsuitable. The 

 name results from the similarity of this faculty with 

 the physical taste. The office of both is to dis- 

 criminate between the agreeable and disagreeable ; 

 but the comparison has often been carried too far ; 

 thus, because the beautiful is also agreeable, the 

 beautiful and agreeable have often been taken for 

 one and the same ; and because matters of physical 

 taste are not proper subjects of dispute (since the 

 same flavour, for instance, may be pleasant to one 

 person and very disagreeable to others), it has been 

 sometimes supposed that taste, in aesthetics, can 

 have reference only to the accidental impression of 

 a work of art on the individual. But aesthetics 

 teaches that, though an individual may not like a 

 picture of Raphael, and find less satisfaction in a 

 drama of Shakspcare than in the coarse productions 

 of a very inferior mind, there is yet beauty in them ; 

 that is to say, they answer the demands of certain 

 rules which have an objective (q. v.) and general 

 character, so that the beauty of a work of art may 

 be a proper subject of discussion. Taste is the 

 faculty of judgment operating in a certain sphere. 

 It must be formed by practice, whereby it differs 

 essentially from the sense of the beautiful. This 



Blumenbach, in his Comp. Anatomy, Engl. by Conlson 

 (London, 1827, ch xviii), says: " 1 have seen an a<lult, and, in 

 other respects, well formed man, who wns born without a 

 tongue. He could distinguish, nevertheless, very easily, the 

 taM e* of solutions of salt, Miirar and aloes, rubbed on his palate, 

 and would express the taste of each by writing." 



