In a nota bene to the introduction of his Elements of Criticism, Henry Home, Lord Kames, informs readers of his decision to omit the definite article from the title in order to avoid the impression that he ever intended to exhaust his subject, as if it were possible to enumerate all the elements of criticism rather than offer a representative selection from a very large sample: because the “author is far from imagining that he has completed the list,” Kames writes, “a more humble title is proper, such as may express any number of parts less than the whole” (Elements 1.19). The title of the present study – The British Aesthetic Tradition – would not survive grammatically without a definite article, but, in the spirit of Kames, its retention should not be read as a claim to have written a definitive or exhaustive study. Some readers will object to the choice of figures and themes included, as others will wonder at those omitted, or find reason to criticize the relative space devoted to each and what is claimed of and for the content of their work. The gracious reader might bear in mind, however, that, by one estimate, the number of publications on aesthetics in the eighteenth century alone ran to some five thousand, and one dare not even speculate on how many fold that has risen with the passage of time, developments in publishing, and the growth of an academic industry. Besides, a history of thought is less a mirror of reality than a representation of its subject matter, crafted in good faith, accurate and honest as it goes, but refracted in the narrative it develops: something must always be left out and surely, as Hume remarks of the Iliad, the reader does not want to know every time Achilles ties his shoelaces.