It is the lowest style only of arts, whether of Painting, Poetry, or Music, that may be said, in the vulgar sense, to be naturally pleasing. The higher efforts of those arts, we know by experience, do not affect minds wholly uncultivated. This refined taste is the consequence of education and habit: we are born only with a capacity of entertaining this refinement, as we are born with a disposition to receive and obey all the rules and regulations of society; and so far it may be said to be natural to us, and no further. What has been said may show the Artist how necessary it is, when he looks about him for the advice and criticism of his friends, to make some distinction of the character, taste, experience, and observation in this Art, of those from whom it is received. An ignorant, uneducated man may, like Apelles's critic, be a competent judge of the truth of the representation of a sandal; or, to go somewhat higher, like Molière's old woman, may decide upon what is nature, in regard to comic humour; but a critic in the higher style of art ought to possess the same refined taste which directed the Artist in his work. To illustrate this principle by a comparison with other Arts, I shall now produce some instances to show that they, as well as our own Art, renounce the narrow idea of nature, and the narrow theories derived from that mistaken principle, and apply to that reason only which informs us not what imitation is--a natural representation of a given object--but what it is natural for the imagination to be delighted with. And perhaps there is no better way of acquiring this knowledge than by this kind of analogy: each art will corroborate and mutually reflect the truth on the other. Such a kind of juxtaposition may likewise have this use, that whilst the Artist is amusing himself in the contemplation of other Arts, he may habitually transfer the principles of those Arts to that which he professes: which ought to be always present to his mind, and to which everything is to be referred. So far is Art from being derived from, or having any immediate intercourse with particular nature as its model, that there are many Arts that set out with a professed deviation from it. This is certainly not so exactly true in regard to Painting and Sculpture. Our elements are laid in gross common nature--an exact imitation of what is before us; but when we advance to the higher state, we consider this power of imitation, though first in the order of acquisition, as by no means the highest in the scale of perfection.