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Dissertation on the Progress of the Fine Arts

Chapter 3: PREFACE.
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About This Book

The author analyzes why major fine art has historically appeared in simpler societies by examining the social conditions that supported it, using sculpture (and by extension poetry) as the example. He attributes artistic flourishing to small, decentralized communities where public ritual, bodily display, and communal functions made artists intimately connected to popular life, producing original, native work. He contrasts that with contemporary complex societies that foster technical and intellectual achievements but lack the conditions for powerful art, and he proposes that enlightened social reform could reconcile modern complexity with the communal features necessary for major artistic creation.

DISSERTATIONS,

Essays,

AND

PARALLELS.

BY

JOHN ROBERT SCOTT, D. D.

LONDON:
Printed by T. Bensley, Bolt Court,
AND SOLD BY J. JOHNSON, 72, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD;
AND MESS. C. & R. BALDWIN, NEW BRIDGE STREET,
BLACKFRIARS.
1804.

CONTENTS.

  PAGE.
A Dissertation on the Influence of Religion on Civil Society 1
A Dissertation on the Expulsion of the Moors from Spain, and the Protestants from France and the Low Countries
 
33
A Dissertation on the first Peopling of America 75
A Dissertation on the Progress of the Fine Arts 125
A Dissertation on National Population 181
An Essay on Writing History 219
An Essay on the Question, Was Eloquence beneficial to Athens? 245
An Essay on the Influence of Taste on Morals 269
Comparison between William III, of England and Henry IV, of France 303
Comparison of Cardinal Ximenes and Cardinal Richelieu 323
Comparison between Augustus Cæsar and Lewis XIV 343
Comparison of Maximilian de Bethune, Duke of Sully, and William Pitt, Earl of Chatham 361

PREFACE.

Most of the following compositions were written several years ago, when the Author was a student in the distinguished University of Dublin; whose acknowledged excellence in classical literature, and in every branch of scientific learning, needs not the celebration of his feeble praise: and by it the first and second Dissertations, and one of the Essays, were honoured with the first literary rewards in the power of that learned body to bestow. Written at first with an honest desire of acquiring fair reputation by praise-worthy exertions, they are now submitted to the public eye from a wish to contribute to the liberal amusement, and perhaps to the improvement, of the minds of his fellow-creatures; with all the natural anxieties of an author addressing a public, to whom he is little known; but without any unmanly dread or humiliating deprecation of just and candid criticism. Should they drop still-born from the press, as it may be has been the fate of as meritorious compositions, the author (as becomes him) will submit without murmuring to the general verdict. Should they, on the contrary, be graced with a favourable reception, he shall deem himself honoured by such notice; and will endeavour to render some larger works of his, shortly to be submitted to the same respectable tribunal, as worthy as his abilities will permit of its approving judgment.

Gloucester Street,
Queen Square, 1804.