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ADDITIONAL NOTES. XIII. 

 ANALYSIS OF TASTE. 



Fond Fancy's eye recalls the form divine, 



And Taste sits smiling upon Beauty's shrine. CANTO III. 1. 221. 



THE word Taste in its extensive application may express the plea- 

 sures received by any of our senses, when excited into action by the 

 stimulus of external objects; as when odours stimulate the nostrils, 

 or flavours the palate; or when smoothness, or softness, are perceived 

 by the touch, or warmth by its adapted organ of sense. The word 

 Taste is also used to signify the pleasurable trains of ideas suggested 

 by language, as in the compositions of poetry and oratory. But the 

 pleasures, consequent to the exertions of our sense of vision only, are 

 designed here to be treated of, with occasional references to those of 

 the ear, when they elucidate each other. 



When any of our organs of sense are excited into their due quan- 

 tity of action, a pleasurable sensation succeeds, as shown in Zoonomia, 

 Vol. I. Sect. IV. These are simply the pleasures attending perception, 

 and not those which are termed the pleasures of Taste; which consist 

 of additional pleasures arising from the peculiar forms or colours of 

 objects, or of their peculiar combinations or successions, or from other 

 agreeable trains of ideas previously associated with them. 



There are four sources of pleasure attendant on th.e excitation of 

 the nerves of vision by light and colours, besides that simply of per- 

 ception above mentioned; the first is derived from a degree of novelty 

 of the forms, colours, numbers, combinations, or successions, and 

 visible objects. The second is derived from a degree of repetition of 

 their forms, colours, numbers, combinations, or successions. Where 

 these two circumstances exist united in certain quantities, and com- 

 pose the principal part of a landscape, it is termed picturesque by 



