ABSTRACT
The role of taste in a rapidly expanding consumer society, along with notions of fashion, proved to be a particularly troublesome issue during the period. David Reid in his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, (1785), wrote, ‘I think there are axioms, even in matters of taste. Notwithstanding the variety found among men, in taste, there are, I apprehend, some common principles, even in matters of this kind’. 1
