Here, then, is a dilemma; if I say what I really feel
about this work, after vainly endeavouring day after day to discover
the transcendent merits discovered by thousands (or at least proclaimed
by them), there is every likelihood of my incurring the contempt of
connoisseurs, and of being reproached with want of taste in art. This
is the bugbear which scares thousands. For myself, I would rather incur
the contempt of connoisseurs than my own; the repreach of defective
taste is more endurable than the reproach of insincerity. Suppose I am
deficient in the requisite knowledge and sensibility, shall I be less
so by pretending to admire what really gives me no exquisite enjoyment?
Will the pleasure I feel in pictures be enhanced because other men
consider me right in my admlration, or diminished because they consider
me wrong?
[I have never thoroughly understood the painful anxiety of people to be
shielded against the dishonouring suspicion of not rightly appreciating
pictures, even when the very phrases they use betray their ignorance
and insensibility.
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