CHAPTER V.

ÆSTHETICS AND THEIR INFLUENCE.

The present chapter itself a kind of excursus 141

A parabasis on “philosophical” criticism 141

Modern Æsthetics: their fount in Descartes and its branches 146

In Germany: negative as well as positive inducements 147

Baumgarten 148

_De Nonnullis ad Poema Pertinentibus_ 148

And its definition of poetry 148

The _Aletheophilus_ 149

The _Æsthetica_ 149

Sulzer 150

Eberhard 151

France: the Père André, his _Essai sur le Beau_ 151

Italy: Vico 152

His literary places 152

The _De Studiorum Ratione_ 153

The _De Constantia Jurisprudentis_ 153

The first _Scienza Nuova_ 154

The second 154

Rationale of all this 155

A very great man and thinker, but in pure Criticism an influence malign or null 156

England 157

Shaftesbury 157

Hume 159

Examples of his critical opinions 160

His inconsistency 162

Burke on the Sublime and Beautiful 163

The Scottish æsthetic-empirics: Alison 164

The _Essay on Taste_ 165

Its confusions 166

And arbitrary absurdities 167

An interim conclusion on the æsthetic matter 168