historian of the literature of the century in bestowing on it the
coveted epithet of epoch-making.

The book is full of crudities. We feel the worse side of the
eighteenth century when Burke tells us that a thirst for Variety in
architecture is sure to leave very little true taste; or that an air
of robustness and strength is very prejudicial to beauty; or that sad
fuscous colours are indispensable for sublimity. Many of the sections,
again, are little more than expanded definitions from the dictionary.
Any tyro may now be shocked at such a proposition as that beauty acts
by relaxing the solids of the whole system. But at least one signal
merit remains to the _Inquiry_. It was a vigorous enlargement of the
principle, which Addison had not long before timidly illustrated, that
critics of art seek its principles in the wrong place, so long as
they limit their search to poems, pictures, engravings, statues, and
buildings, instead of first arranging the sentiments and faculties in
man to which art makes its appeal. Addison's treatment was slight and
merely literary; Burke dealt boldly with his subject on the base of
the most scientific psychology that was then within his reach. To
approach it on the psychological side at all was to make a distinct
and remarkable advance in the method of the inquiry which he had taken
in hand.




CHAPTER II

IN IRELAND--PARLIAMENT--BEACONSFIELD