ABSTRACT
Most certainly taste was the chief aesthetic concept of the eighteenth century, and the Scots participated fully and enthusiastically in the century of taste. When eighteenth-century Scottish men of letters referenced the sense of beauty, they were often discussing the sense of taste. Some regarded taste to be the finer sense or relish, more than merely experiencing and feeling, but also a matter of discriminating and judging. Others both acknowledged and contested standards of agreement in adopting their working viewpoints in matters of aesthetics. Surely they did see taste in parallel with morals, for which, obviously, there existed certain paradigms that were fairly widely acknowledged. I explore the subject first, as the nature and extent of the sense of taste, to include refinement and standards; next, through the process of criticism; third, through the roles of imagination and genius’s part in that; fourth, through the impact of trends and fashion; and finally, as tastes that carried a peculiar Scottish identity.
