It is an expression of delight in the prolonged
contemplation of a vile thing, and delight in that is an "unmannered,"
or "immoral" quality. It is "bad taste" in the profoundest sense--it
is the taste of the devils. On the other hand, a picture of Titian's,
or a Greek statue, or a Greek coin, or a Turner landscape, expresses
delight in the perpetual contemplation of a good and perfect thing.
That is an entirely moral quality--it is the taste of the angels And
all delight in art, and all love of it, resolve themselves into simple
love of that which deserves love. That deserving is the quality which
we call "loveliness"--(we ought to have an opposite word, hateliness,
to be said of the things which deserve to be hated); and it is not an
indifferent nor optional thing whether we love this or that; but it is
just the vital function of all our being. What we _like_ determines
what we _are_, and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste is
inevitably to form character.
As I was thinking over this, in walking up Fleet Street the other day,
my eye caught the title of a book standing open in a bookseller's
window. It was--"On the necessity of the diffusion of taste among all
classes." "Ah," I thought to myself, "my classifying friend, when you
have diffused your taste, where will your classes be? The man who
likes what you like, belongs to the same class with you, I think.
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