Our notion of taste may be easily understood by what has been said
upon the subject of genius; for mere good taste is nothing else but
genius without the power of execution.

It must be born; and is to be improved chiefly by being accustomed,
and the earlier the better, to the most exquisite objects of taste in
its various kinds. For the taste in writing and painting, and in every
thing else, is insensibly formed upon what we are accustomed to; as
well as taste in eating and drinking. One who from his youth has been
used to drink nothing but heavy dismal port, will not immediately
acquire a relish for claret or burgundy.

In the most stupid ages there is more good taste than one would at
first sight imagine. Even the present, abuse it with what contemptuous
epithets you please, cannot be totally void of it. As long as there
are noble humane and generous dispositions amongst mankind, there must
be good taste. For in general, I do not say always, the taste will be
in proportion to those moral qualities and that sensibility of mind
from which they take their rise. And while many, amongst the great and
the learned, are allowed to have taste for no better reason than that
it is their own opinion, it is often possessed by those who are not
conscious of it, and dream as little of pretending to it as to a star
and garter. An honest farmer, or shepherd, who is acquainted with no
language but what is spoken in his own county, may have a much truer
relish of the _English_ writers than the most dogmatical pedant that
ever erected himself into a commentator, and from his _Gothic_ chair,
with an ill-bred arrogance, dictated false criticism to the gaping
multitude.