22 February 1728 - 22 February 1795 (yup, died on his birthday)
Scottish writer and clergyman, a contemporary of Edmund Burke who was part of the vigorous late eighteenth-century debate surrounding aesthetics and, in particular, the sublime. (For more, see the The Sublime here at LitGothic.)
Brief discussion of Gerard's most important work, An Essay on Taste, in which it is established that sometimes size does matter.... [George P. Landow, Victorian Web, Brown]
- another brief discussion [A Dictionary of Sensibility, UVa]
An excellent overview of "taste" as a literary and aesthetic concept; it mentions Gerard among many others. [Charlotte Stevens, Loughborough U; Literary Encyclopedia]