. There was a time when, on the whole, all educated persons shared the same texts; now there are simply too many immortal masterpieces, and take any two readers (take those who read the most), and they won't share all the same authors. Probably this flood of work, beginning in the early 17th-c, contributed to the appearance of "taste" (or "gusto") in discussions of art. ------------- Discussions of "taste" begin in the eighteenth century and are mostly about teaching the upwardly mobile shopkeepers and titans of industry that they already speak prose.
As the bourgeoisie did not rule by divine right, 'discernment' and 'taste' became the new means of annointing and justification. Your fave, Jane Austen, was perfectly acquainted with that phenomenon.
Joanna