But even those who are endued with good natural taste, often judge
implicitly and by rote, without ever consulting their own taste.
Instances of this passive indolence, or rather this unconsciousness of
one's own faculties, appear every day; not only in the fine arts, but
in cases where the mere _taste_, according to the original meaning
of the word, is alone concerned. For I am positive there are many
thousands who, if they were to bring their own palate to a severe
examination, would discover that they really find a more delicious
flavour in mutton than in venison, in flounder than in turbut, and yet
prefer middling or bad venison to the best mutton; that is, what is
scarcest and dearest, and consequently what is, from the folly of
mankind, the most in vogue, to what is really the most agreeable to
their own private taste.

In matter of taste, the public, for the most part, suffers itself to
be led by a few who perhaps are really no judges; but who, under the
favour of some advantages of title, place, or fortune, set up for
judges, and are implicitly followed even by those who have taste.
These washy dictators have learnt at school to admire such authors as
have for ages been possessed of an indisputed renown: but they would
never have been the first to have discovered strokes of true genius in
a co-temporary writer, though they had lived at the court of AUGUSTUS
or of Q. ELIZABETH.

So undistinguishing is our taste, that if the most torpid dunce this
fruitful age can boast of, could by some artful imposture prepossess
the public, that the most insipid of all his own bread-sauce
compositions, to be published next winter, was a piece MILTON's, or
any other celebrated author, recovered from dust and obscurity, it
would be received with universal applause; and perhaps be translated