ABSTRACT
The relation between taste and science is the overarching problem, which concerned Daniel Webb in his three essays. In the opening of his Inquiry into the Beauties of Painting (1760), Webb tells us that "the source of taste is feeling, so is it of judgement," he continues, "which is nothing more than this same sensibility, improved by the study of its proper objects, and brought to a just point of certainty and correctness". Webb felt obliged to reexamine some aesthetic assumptions critically, considering himself responsible for the cultivation of the young. These two tasks are well reflected in Webb's treatises, and complement each other. Webb's analysis of prosodical procedures, including his attack on sanctioned Greek prosody, closes a circle opened by Jacob a generation earlier. Unlike Jacob, Webb not only differentiated between musicalized and painterly poetry, but unequivocally put at the service of the former his major persuasive powers.
