Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author [collected in Characteristics]

London

John Morphew

1710, 1714

"The Moral Artist, who can thus imitate the Creator, and is thus knowing in the inward Form and Structure of his Fellow-Creature, will hardly, I presume, be found unknowing in Himself, or at a loss in those Numbers which make the Harmony of a Mind."

I Must confess there is hardly any where to be found a more insipid Race of Mortals, than those whom we Moderns are contented to call Poets, for having attain'd the chiming Faculty of a Language, with an injudicious random use of Wit and Fancy. But for the Man, who truly and in a just sense deserves the Name of Poet, and who as a real Master, or Architect in the kind, can describe both Men and Manners, and give to an Action its just Body and Proportions; he will be found, if I mistake not, a very different Creature. Such a Poet is indeed a second Maker: a just Prometheus, under Jove. Like that Sovereign Artist or universal Plastick Nature, he forms a Whole, coherent and proportion'd in it-self, with due Subjection and Subordinacy of constituent Parts. He notes the Boundarys of the Passions, and knows their exact Tones and Measures; by which he justly represents them, marks the Sublime of Sentiments and Action, and distinguishes the Beautiful from the Deform'd, the Amiable from the Odious. The Moral Artist, who can thus imitate the Creator, and is thus knowing in the inward Form and Structure of his Fellow-Creature, will hardly, I presume, be found unknowing in Himself, or at a loss in those Numbers which make the Harmony of a Mind. For Knavery is mere Dissonance and Disproportion. And tho Villains may have strong Tones and natural Capacitys of Action; 'tis impossible that true Judgment and Ingenuity shou'd reside, where Harmony and Honesty have no being.
(pp. 207-8; p. 93 in Klein)

Music::Harmony

Reading

A complicated publication history. At least 10 entries in ESTC (1710, 1711, 1714, 1733, 1744, 1751, 1757, 1758, 1773, 1790).

See Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author (London: John Morphew, 1710). <Link to ESTC><Link to Google Books>

See also "Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author" in Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. In Three Volumes. (London: John Darby, 1711). <Link to ESTC>

Some text drawn from ECCO and Google Books; also from Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury. Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. Lawrence E. Klein (Cambridge: CUP, 2001). Klein's text is based on the British Library's copy of the second edition of 1714. [Texts to be collated.]

07/10/2013