 Unfortunately, numerous interpretative challenges arise from Hume’s scattered presentation, his range of references, and his eighteenth-century assumptions about art. Like many of his contemporaries, Hume regards “poetry and the polite authors” as the most important arts (PW 3, 19). Timothy Costelloe (2018, chap. 4) consequently constructs an excellent survey of Humean aesthetics by canvassing the full range of Hume’s comments on poets and poetry. However, poetry differs from the more practical arts in being designed for the primary purpose of giving pleasure (SOT, 277). When using the terms “art” and “artist,” Hume sometimes means any human artifice and any skilled designer (in one context, an “artist” is someone who repairs a clock (EHU, 87)). In contexts where he can only be taken to be interested in the narrower category of fine art, Hume variously mentions painting, statuary, architecture, dance, poetry, and music. But he places poetry among the arts of eloquent public discourse. Eloquence includes sermons, essays, argumentative discourse, and other categories that we today would regard as too overtly didactic to be fine art (E).