ABSTRACT
James Harris was educated at the grammar school of the precinct of the cathedral at Salisbury, where he was born. Harris was a man of letters with a decided bent towards the classics, especially Aristotle. In line with an established tradition, Harris' treatise tries to assess the relative merits of the arts by comparing them. Accepting the Aristotelian conception of art as imitation, he set out to gauge the success of the several arts in these terms. Through Shaftesbury is never mentioned in the Dialogue Concerning Art, Harris obviously takes issue with the former whose premises were decidely Platonic. Harris, like Jacob, contributes clarifications of the sort on which Lessing's thesis and other theories eventually rested. Ironically, his systematic approach, which reflects his philosophical bent, reveals the shortcomings of his premises. Time and again, albeit unwittingly, Harris found himself breaking the frames he set for himself, challenging the very theories with which he began.
