Translated with an Introduction and Notes by James O Young and Margaret Cameron Jean Baptiste Du Bos Critical Reflections on Poetry and Painting first published in French in 1719 is one of the seminal works of modern aesthetics Du Bos rejected the seventeenth century view that works of art are assessed by reason Instead he believed audience members have sentiments in response to artworks Their sentiments are fainter versions of those they would feel in response to actually seeing what the work of art imitates Du Bos was influenced by John Locke s empiricism and in turn had a major impact on virtually every major eighteenth century contributor to philosophy of art including Voltaire Montesquieu Diderot Rousseau Herder Lessing Mendelssohn Kames Gerard and Hume This is the first modern annotated and scholarly edition of the Critical Reflections in any language