The Arts in Mind

Pioneering Texts of a Coterie of British Men of Letters

Ruth HaCohen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351325028
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

Amajor shift in critical attitudes toward the arts took place in the eighteenth century. The fine arts were now looked upon as a group, divorced from the sciences and governed by their own rules. The century abounded with treatises that sought to establish the overriding principles that differentiate art from other walks of life as well as the principles that differentiate them from each other. This burst of scholarly activity resulted in the incorporation of aesthetics among the classic branches of philosophy, heralding the cognitive turn in epistemology. Among the writings that initiated this turn, none were more important than the British contribution. The Arts in Mind brings together an annotated selection of these key texts.

A companion volume to the editors' Tuning the Mind, which analyzed this major shift in world view and its historical context, The Arts in Mind is the first representative sampling of what constitutes an important school of British thought. The texts are neither obscure nor forgotten, although most histories of eighteenth-century thought treat them in a partial or incomplete way. Here they are made available complete or through representative extracts together with an editor's introduction to each selection providing essential biographical and intellectual background. The treatises included are representative of the changed climate of opinion which entailed new issues such as those of perception, symbolic function, and the role of history and culture in shaping the world.>

Daniel Webb

Born in 1719 in Maidstown, Daniel Webb received a classical education at Oxford. Webb wrote 3 treatises:

An Inquiry into the Beauties of Painting (and into the Merits of the Most Celebrated Painters, Ancient and Moderns), London, 1760, Remarks on the Beauties of Poetry, London 1762, and Observations on the Correspondence between Poetry and Music, London, 1769.

The relation between taste and science is the overarching problem, which concerned Webb in his three essays. In the opening of his Inquiry into the Beauties of Painting (1760), Webb tells us that “the source of taste is feeling, so is it of judgement,” he continues, “which is nothing more than this same sensibility, improved by the study of its proper objects, and brought to a just point of certainty and correctness” (1760: 8). Issues of taste, we have seen, received a major thrust with the growing awareness of the middle-class of the impact exerted by its economic power on matters related to aesthetic preferences. Rejecting the conservative and aristocratic aesthetic criteria, the up and coming bourgeoisie opted for a more subjective attitude, one less based on academic judgement. It was, however, the third Earl of Shaftesbury who encouraged such a development by considering taste as well as judgment to be grounded in feeling — a special “sense” responsible for both. But, as the reader may recall, Shaftesbury related both to the concept of “perfection,” which he viewed, like Baumgarten, as a guiding force in decision-making in moral and other spiritual domains. As noted in Vol. I, ‘beauty’ thus acquired an esteemed position in man’s striving for perfectibility.

In line with this tradition, Webb felt obliged to reexamine some aesthetic assumptions critically, considering himself responsible for the cultivation of the young. These two tasks are well reflected in Webb’s treatises, and complement each other. Whereas the Inquiry is primarily concerned with advising the young with regard to taste in the visual arts, it also reopens on several theoretical issues which are examined closely. By contrast, Webb’s other two treatises begin more theoretically and proceed to offer valuable advice to poets, amounting to no less than a reform in English poetry.

It is not altogether surprising, therefore, that Webb should refuse artists the status of critics, while retaining a full appreciation of their technical knowledge. Neither does he deny the artist’s creative powers; in fact he considered himself as dependent on them. He believed that the understanding of the nature of artistic creation does not necessarily constitute a part of the artist’s domain, arguing that criticism is itself a different kind of creative act, gaining momentum with increased refinement. Webb’s criticism rested on a vast knowledge of classical as well modern literary and philosophical sources, drawing mainly on concepts and arguments employed by the empiricists. He added his own good commonsense, using, for example, his own experience of poetic delivery as empirical data for the unveiling of its effect. By analogy, he also enlisted poetic rhetoric as a model of the effects of music for which he had less ready evidence. Indeed, analogies served Webb to sift out his arguments. Unlike some of his contemporaries, however, he was well aware that simple analogies won’t do, and one of his main concerns was to bridge the different incommensurable phenomena via factors they held in common.

The present treatise attempts to specify that which constitutes the relationship between sound and sentiment — known empirically but not well understood theoretically — and illustrates Webb’s procedure. It should be viewed as part of an overall conception according to which the “polite arts” consist of “different means of addressing the same passions.” As such, Webb tells us, the arts “are the most effectual and ready method of conveying our ideas” (1760: 10). The correspondences among the arts, which he sought, consist of the relationship between the perceptual constituents of each artistic medium and that which characterizes the passions. Characterizing the perceptual infrastructure peculiar to each art, Webb employs empiricist terminology to give exactitude and depth to contentions held from the days of Jacob. Of central importance is his differentiation between ‘succession of ideas’ and ‘succession of impressions’ which he applies to poetry and music, respectively. In his treatment of passion he is aware of the shortcomings of the seventeenth-century approach, and tries to adopt a more persuasive one. This treatment, we believe, resulted in a genuine theoretical breakthrough, in which four classes of emotions (“love,” “pride,” “anger” and “sorrow”) seem to share a common theoretical space and in which “mixed” emotions may find their specific location. For our own argument, it should be borne in mind that this view was conceived in an attempt to solve an aesthetic problem. It is ‘movement,’ or “coincidence of movement” by means of which Webb bridges the two incommensurable subjects, poetry and music, for it is movement which constitutes their unified, theoretical space. Although Webb demonstrated the centrality of movement for each of the arts, he did not leave it at that, but, rather, connected each through a third factor — the “vibrations” they both cause. The coincidence which occurs is associative — a “natural” association between the musical movement and the emotional “locus” to which it relates.

Combined with poetry, music acquires further specificity, due to the “label” which poetry bestows upon it, a label related to a certain emotion in the given class (e.g. “courage” and “indignation” in the case of “anger”). In the interaction between the two, poetry gains as well. While poetry “lends music sentiments,” i.e. specific emotions, it “borrows movement” and flexibility, which supply nuances to emotions. This may be achieved in poetry only when constraints of language are reduced, as is the case of monosyllabic poetry, the units of which are liable to result in manifold successions, according to the nature of the desired movement. The units themselves, in such a case, Webb argues, consist of a “succession of impressions”, preserving the nature of a primitive state of expression, in which combinations of sounds and movements imitate, directly or metaphorically, external and internal objects.

Webb’s analysis of prosodical procedures, including his attack on sanctioned Greek prosody, closes a circle opened by Jacob a generation earlier. Unlike Jacob, Webb not only differentiated between musicalized and painterly poetry, but unequivocally put at the service of the former his major persuasive powers. Whereas this preference reflects a change in taste, it also demonstrates Webb’s ability to delve deep into the secrets — technical as well as perceptual — of the artistic illusion. In fact, this provided Webb with the ability to assess changing tastes and artistic value, and to consider the kinds of interactions and correspondences among the arts, existing as well as desired.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN

POETRY and MUSIC

By the AUTHOR of AN ENQUIRY into the BEAUTIES of PAINTING

Concordant carmina nervis.
Ovid. Metam.
[“the lyre responds in harmony to song”]

Carminis suavitas, numerique, non solum ad aurium delectationem compositi, sed ad res ipsas exprimendas, omnemque animi motum concitandum efficaces. Lowth de Sacr. Poet. Hebraeorum.

[The pleasantness of the poem and the metre is composed not only in order to delight the ears, but is capable also to express the content and to stir up every motion in the soul.]

LONDON Printed for J. DODSLEY, in Pall-mall.

M DCC LXIX.

To his Grace
The DUKE
OF
GRAFTON,
First Lord of the Treasury, &c. &c.

MY LORD,

THE beauty of order in the disposition of visible objects, the powerful effects of arrangement in the succession of our ideas, of measure and proportion in the successions of sounds, are but different modifications of one common principle. The lucidas ordo of Horace marks how much he thought the second connected with the first; the design of the following essay is to prove, how intimately the third is connected with both: to point out the origin, and to lay open the advantages of a musical elocution.¹ We who have no other merit than to feel these advantages are under a natural subjection to those who exert them: the Critic, my Lord Duke, is but a dependent on the Orator. It is under the sanction of this dependence, that I presume to engage your Grace’s attention; and to claim a part of that time which you so happily employ to the noblest purposes.²

I have the honour to be

Your GRACE’s

Most humble, and

Obedient servant,

DANIEL webb.

1. From the first innocent sentences of his dedicatory remarks to Lord Grafton, one can learn a great deal about Webb’s position and intentions concerning the present essay. Webb, like the former members of our group, considered painting, poetry and music the major constituents of the fine arts. As noted in our introduction, Webb dealt with poetry and painting before he undertook the present study. In these essays as well as in the present one, Webb differs from previous writers by taking the commonality of the three arts as a starting point for subsequent arguments, rather than as a point to arrive at.

From the outset it is clear that when he talks about commonality in the arts he recognizes two crucial elements: the first refers to order and arrangement — properties to be found in the art object — and the second refers to their effect on the percipients. He reminds us that Horace connected the two in his lucidus ordo; but we might add that Horace did not realize that the concept divides into two distinct theoretical propositions, related to cause and effect.

Webb differs also from the Neoplatonic approach which held that the various arts convey similar ideas even though they are differently clad. His emphasis on organization and effect leaves room for differences among the arts as far as properties, contents and perceptual aspects are concerned. In other words, his theory does not contradict Lessing’s approach concerning the “limits” of the individual arts, it only identifies their commonality with a general cognitive pri...

Table of contents

• Cover page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury
• Francis Hutcheson
• Hildebrand Jacob
• James Harris
• Charles Avison
• James Beattie
• Daniel Webb
• Thomas Twining
• Adam Smith
• Bibliography