 Joseph Addison’s theory of taste resides principally in the work Addison refers to as his “essay on the pleasures of the imagination” (Addison and Steele 1879, nos. 409 and 421). It comprises eleven papers—nos. 411 through 421—appearing in the journal The Spectator on successive days during the summer of 1712. The timing of the essay’s publication raises questions about its relation to Shaftesbury’s Characteristics, which had appeared one year earlier. But it is difficult to detect even a hint of Shaftesbury’s theory of taste in Addison’s. That the two theories deeply oppose one another might suggest that Addison’s is a reaction against Shaftesbury’s. But Addison does not engage Shaftesbury: rather he tends simply to assume what Shaftesbury simply denies and vice-versa. Moreover Addison understood himself to be undertaking something “entirely new” in advancing a theory of taste (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 409). It seems best to conclude, therefore, that there are two original British theories of taste. While it would be hard to say which was more influential, it is easy to say that each was greatly so: every subsequent British theory of taste, at least until the close of the Eighteenth Century, shows the strong influence of one, the other, or both.