973. An enlightened mind will derive pleasure from every style. 'When I perceive a man,' observes Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges, ' incapable of deriving pleasure from more than one style of composition, and dogmatising on its exclusive merit, I pity his weakness, and despise his presumption. When he narrows his curiosity, either to what is old or what is new; when he confines his praise either to the dead or to the living; though in both cases he is ridiculous, perhaps his folly is more evinced in the last.' (Censura Literaria, vol. viii. p. 214.) It is the privilege of the man who has opened to his mind by observation and study all the springs of pleasant association, to delight by turns in the rudeness of solitary woods, in the cheerfulness of spreading plains, in the decorations of refined art, in the magnificence of luxuriant wealth, in the activity of crowded ports, the industry of cities, the pomp of spectacles, and the pageantry of festivals. (Ed. Rev., 1806.)
