phrase, good taste"; touching further on taste and genius he quotes, "that ingenious Spaniard," Gracian,[9] who gave the word the sense of "practical wit," enabling one to perceive the "true signification" of things; his "man of good taste" becomes in our language "a man of tact" in the affairs of life.[10] The transference of the word to the domain of æsthetic seems to have taken place in France during the last quarter of the century. "_Il y a dans l'art un point de perfection, comme de bonté ou de maturité dans la nature: celui qui le sent et qui l'aime a le goût parfait; celui qui ne le sent pas, et qui aime au deçà ou au delà, a le goût défectueux. Il y a donc un bon et un mauvais goût, et l'on dispute des goûts avec fondement,_" writes La Bruyère[11] (1688). As attributes or variants of taste it was usual to mention _delicacy_ and _variety_ or _variability._ Bearing its fresh critical--literary content, but not freed from the encumbrance of its earlier practical and moral significance, the word spread from France into other European countries. Thomasius introduced it into Germany in 1687;[12] and in England it becomes "good taste." In Italy it appears as early as 1696 as title of a large book written by Camillo Ettori, the Jesuit, _Il buon gusto ne' componimenti rettorici_.[13] The preface notes: "The expression 'good taste,' proper to those who rightly distinguish good from bad flavour in foods, is now in general use and claimed by every one as a title in connexion with literature and the humanities"; it reappears in 1708 at the beginning of Muratori's[14] book already quoted: Trevisano treats of it philosophically: Salvini discusses it in his note upon the _Perfetta Poesia_ of Muratori above mentioned, where the subject of good taste occupies several pages,[15] and finally it gives its name to the Academy of Good Taste founded at Palermo in 1718.[16] Scholars of the day who took up the discussion of the theme, recollecting some passages scattered throughout the ancient classics, placed the new concept in relation with the "_tacitus quidam sensus sine ulla ratione et arte_" of Cicero; and with the "_indicium_" which "_nec magis arte traditur quam gustus aut odor_" of Quintilian.[17] More particularly Montfaucon de Villars (1671)[18] wrote a book on "Delicacy"; Ettori strove to find some definition more satisfactory than those current at the time (_e.g._ "it is the finest invention of wit, the flower of wit and extract of beauty's self," and similar conceits);[19] Orsi made it the subject of his _Considerazioni_ written in reply to Bouhours' book. [Sidenote: _Fancy or Imagination._]