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"Refinement and elegance of taste has an effect on fancy, in some respects opposite to those of sensibility. Where it prevails, it hinders many forms and appearances striking to others, from yielding it such gratification as may make an impression on the fancy."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Author

An Essay on Genius

Place of Publication

London and Edinburgh

Publisher

Printed for W. Strahan, T.Cadell, and W. Creech

Date

1774

Metaphor

"Refinement and elegance of taste has an effect on fancy, in some respects opposite to those of sensibility. Where it prevails, it hinders many forms and appearances striking to others, from yielding it such gratification as may make an impression on the fancy."

Metaphor in Context

Refinement and elegance of taste has an effect on fancy, in some respects opposite to those of sensibility. Where it prevails, it hinders many forms and appearances striking to others, from yielding it such gratification as may make an impression on the fancy. There is no risk of its running into extravagance; the danger is, left it deviate into quaintness, affectation, and subtilty. Vicious refinement is pleased with these, and sends imagination in search of them; they are adopted, and usurp the place of natural beauties. But true refinement of taste leads imagination to reject whatever is coarse, or even of inferiour beauty, and, penetrating into such beauties as are most latent, feeling such as are most delicate, and comprehending such as are most complex, it enables them to affect and give an impulse to fancy, and directs it to produce not only what is beautiful, but what is elegant, not only what pleases, but also what fills the taste, to produce according to the particular structure of the imagination, the graceful, the profound, or the extraordinary. The artists of simple ages, can scarce attain so great a refinement of taste, as to avoid, in every instance, ideas which will appear gross and become unpleasing in politer times. Even Homer admits images in some degree coarse and indelicate; Virgil, bred in the elegance of the Augustan age, was directed by an improved taste, when he imitated him most closely, to reject some of these images altogether, and to avoid the offensive part of others. It is the want of perfect elegance of taste formed by acquaintance with the best models, that has mixt stiffness and ungracefulness with the great excellences of Albert Durer, Hans Holbein, Rembrandt, and even Rubens.
(III.vi, pp. 407-8)