"The first attempts that were made to fix true ideas of taste upon a surer basis, were by natural philosophers, who, in their amplified contemplations on the universal beauty displayed in the harmony and order of nature, very soon lost themselves; an event that, from the way in which they set out, was inevitable: for, if I may be permitted to adopt an allegorical figure, it necessarily led them into the wide road of Order and Regularity, which they unexpectedly found crossed and intersected by many other paths that led into the Labyrinths of Variety; where, not having passed through the Province of Painting, they became confused, and could never find their way. To explaining the order and usefulness of nature they might be equal; but of her sportiveness and fancy they were totally ignorant. To extricate themselves from these difficulties, they ascended the Mound of Moral Beauty, contiguous to the open field of Divinity, where, rambling and ranging at large, they lost all remembrance of their former pursuit. "These gentlemen having failed, it was next suggested that the deeply read and travelled man was the only person fully qualified to undertake the task of analyzing beauty. But here let it be observed, that a few things well seen, and thoroughly understood, are more likely to furnish proper materials for this purpose than the cursory view of all that can be met with in a hasty journey through Europe. "Nature is simple, plain, and true in all her works; and those who strictly adhere to her laws, and closely attend to her appearances in their infinite varieties, are guarded against any prejudiced bias from truth; while those who have seen many things that they cannot well understand, and read many books which they do not fully comprehend, notwithstanding all their pompous parade of knowledge, are apt to wander about it and about it, perpetually perplexing themselves and their readers with the various opinions of other men. "The knowledge necessary for writing a work on the arts, differs as much from that acquired by the simple traveller, as the art of simpling doth from the science of botany. Taking the grand tour to see and pick up curiosities, which the travellers are taught nicely to distinguish from each other by certain cramp marks and hard names, may, with no great impropriety, be termed 'going a simpling;' but with this special difference, that your 'field simpler' never picks up a nettle for a marsh-mallow,--a mistake which your 'tour simpler' is very liable to.