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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Seven Discourses on Art, by Joshua Reynolds,
+Edited by Henry Morley
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Seven Discourses on Art
+
+
+Author: Joshua Reynolds
+
+Release Date: May 8, 2005  [eBook #2176]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEVEN DISCOURSES ON ART***
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1901 Cassell and Company edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk.  Proofing by David, Dawn Smith, Uzma, Jane
+Foster, Juliana Rew, Marie Rhoden and Jo Osment.
+
+
+
+
+
+SEVEN DISCOURSES ON ART
+by Joshua Reyonds
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+It is a happy memory that associates the foundation of our Royal Academy
+with the delivery of these inaugural discourses by Sir Joshua Reynolds,
+on the opening of the schools, and at the first annual meetings for the
+distribution of its prizes.  They laid down principles of art from the
+point of view of a man of genius who had made his power felt, and with
+the clear good sense which is the foundation of all work that looks
+upward and may hope to live.  The truths here expressed concerning Art
+may, with slight adjustment of the way of thought, be applied to
+Literature or to any exercise of the best powers of mind for shaping the
+delights that raise us to the larger sense of life.  In his separation of
+the utterance of whole truths from insistance upon accidents of detail,
+Reynolds was right, because he guarded the expression of his view with
+careful definitions of its limits.  In the same way Boileau was right, as
+a critic of Literature, in demanding everywhere good sense, in condemning
+the paste brilliants of a style then in decay, and fixing attention upon
+the masterly simplicity of Roman poets in the time of Augustus.  Critics
+by rule of thumb reduced the principles clearly defined by Boileau to a
+dull convention, against which there came in course of time a strong
+reaction.  In like manner the teaching of Reynolds was applied by dull
+men to much vague and conventional generalisation in the name of dignity.
+Nevertheless, Reynolds taught essential truths of Art.  The principles
+laid down by him will never fail to give strength to the right artist, or
+true guidance towards the appreciation of good art, though here and there
+we may not wholly assent to some passing application of them, where the
+difference may be great between a fashion of thought in his time and in
+ours.  A righteous enforcement of exact truth in our day has led many
+into a readiness to appreciate more really the minute imitation of a
+satin dress, or a red herring, than the noblest figure in the best of
+Raffaelle's cartoons.  Much good should come of the diffusion of this
+wise little book.
+
+Joshua Reynolds was born on the 15th of July, 1723, the son of a
+clergyman and schoolmaster, at Plympton in Devonshire.  His bent for Art
+was clear and strong from his childhood.  In 1741 at the age of nineteen,
+he began study, and studied for two yours in London under Thomas Hudson,
+a successful portrait painter.  Then he went back to Devonshire and
+painted portraits, aided for some time in his education by attention to
+the work of William Gandy of Exeter.  When twenty-six years old, in May,
+1749, Reynolds was taken away by Captain Keppel to the Mediterranean, and
+brought into contact with the works of the great painters of Italy.  He
+stayed two years in Rome, and in accordance with the principles
+afterwards laid down in these lectures, he refused, when in Rome,
+commissions for copying, and gave his mind to minute observation of the
+art of the great masters by whose works he was surrounded.  He spent two
+months in Florence, six weeks in Venice, a few days in Bologna and Parma.
+"If," he said, "I had never seen any of the fine works of Correggio, I
+should never, perhaps, have remarked in Nature the expression which I
+find in one of his pieces; or if I had remarked it, I might have thought
+it too difficult, or perhaps impossible to execute."
+
+In 1753 Reynolds came back to England, and stayed three months in
+Devonshire before setting up a studio in London, in St. Martin's Lane,
+which was then an artists' quarter.  His success was rapid.  In 1755 he
+had one hundred and twenty-five sitters.  Samuel Johnson found in him his
+most congenial friend.  He moved to Newport Street, and he built himself
+a studio--where there is now an auction room--at 47, Lincoln's Inn
+Fields.  There he remained for life.
+
+In 1760 the artists opened, in a room lent by the Society of Arts, a free
+Exhibition for the sale of their works.  This was continued the next year
+at Spring Gardens, with a charge of a shilling for admission.  In 1765
+they obtained a charter of incorporation, and in 1768 the King gave his
+support to the foundation of a Royal Academy of Arts by seceders from the
+preceding "Incorporated Society of Artists," into which personal feelings
+had brought much division.  It was to consist, like the French Academy,
+of forty members, and was to maintain Schools open to all students of
+good character who could give evidence that they had fully learnt the
+rudiments of Art.  The foundation by the King dates from the 10th of
+December, 1768.  The Schools were opened on the 2nd of January next
+following, and on that occasion Joshua Reynolds, who had been elected
+President--his age was then between forty-five and forty-six--gave the
+Inaugural Address which formed the first of these Seven Discourses.  The
+other six were given by him, as President, at the next six annual
+meetings: and they were all shaped to form, when collected into a volume,
+a coherent body of good counsel upon the foundations of the painter's
+art.
+
+H. M.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE KING
+
+
+The regular progress of cultivated life is from necessaries to
+accommodations, from accommodations to ornaments.  By your illustrious
+predecessors were established marts for manufactures, and colleges for
+science; but for the arts of elegance, those arts by which manufactures
+are embellished and science is refined, to found an academy was reserved
+for your Majesty.
+
+Had such patronage been without effect, there had been reason to believe
+that nature had, by some insurmountable impediment, obstructed our
+proficiency; but the annual improvement of the exhibitions which your
+Majesty has been pleased to encourage shows that only encouragement had
+been wanting.
+
+To give advice to those who are contending for royal liberality has been
+for some years the duty of my station in the Academy; and these
+Discourses hope for your Majesty's acceptance as well-intended endeavours
+to incite that emulation which your notice has kindled, and direct those
+studies which your bounty has rewarded.
+
+May it please your Majesty,
+Your Majesty's
+Most dutiful servant,
+And most faithful subject,
+JOSHUA REYNOLDS.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE MEMBERS OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
+
+
+Gentlemen,--That you have ordered the publication of this Discourse is
+not only very flattering to me, as it implies your approbation of the
+method of study which I have recommended; but likewise, as this method
+receives from that act such an additional weight and authority as demands
+from the students that deference and respect, which can be due only to
+the united sense of so considerable a body of artists.
+
+I am,
+With the greatest esteem and respect,
+GENTLEMEN,
+Your most humble
+And obedient servant,
+JOSHUA REYNOLDS
+
+
+
+
+SEVEN DISCOURSES ON ART
+
+
+A DISCOURSE
+Delivered at the Opening of the Royal Academy, January 2nd, 1769, by the
+President.
+
+
+Gentlemen,--An academy in which the polite arts may be regularly
+cultivated is at last opened among us by royal munificence.  This must
+appear an event in the highest degree interesting, not only to the
+artists, but to the whole nation.
+
+It is indeed difficult to give any other reason why an Empire like that
+of Britain should so long have wanted an ornament so suitable to its
+greatness than that slow progression of things which naturally makes
+elegance and refinement the last effect of opulence and power.
+
+An institution like this has often been recommended upon considerations
+merely mercantile.  But an academy founded upon such principles can never
+effect even its own narrow purposes.  If it has an origin no higher, no
+taste can ever be formed in it which can be useful even in manufactures;
+but if the higher arts of design flourish, these inferior ends will be
+answered of course.
+
+We are happy in having a prince who has conceived the design of such an
+institution, according to its true dignity, and promotes the arts, as the
+head of a great, a learned, a polite, and a commercial nation; and I can
+now congratulate you, gentlemen, on the accomplishment of your long and
+ardent wishes.
+
+The numberless and ineffectual consultations that I have had with many in
+this assembly, to form plans and concert schemes for an academy, afford a
+sufficient proof of the impossibility of succeeding but by the influence
+of Majesty.  But there have, perhaps, been times when even the influence
+of Majesty would have been ineffectual, and it is pleasing to reflect
+that we are thus embodied, when every circumstance seems to concur from
+which honour and prosperity can probably arise.
+
+There are at this time a greater number of excellent artists than were
+ever known before at one period in this nation; there is a general desire
+among our nobility to be distinguished as lovers and judges of the arts;
+there is a greater superfluity of wealth among the people to reward the
+professors; and, above all, we are patronised by a monarch, who, knowing
+the value of science and of elegance, thinks every art worthy of his
+notice that tends to soften and humanise the mind.
+
+After so much has been done by his Majesty, it will be wholly our fault
+if our progress is not in some degree correspondent to the wisdom and,
+generosity of the institution; let us show our gratitude in our
+diligence, that, though our merit may not answer his expectations, yet,
+at least, our industry may deserve his protection.
+
+But whatever may be our proportion of success, of this we may be sure,
+that the present institution will at least contribute to advance our
+knowledge of the arts, and bring us nearer to that ideal excellence which
+it is the lot of genius always to contemplate and never to attain.
+
+The principal advantage of an academy is, that, besides furnishing able
+men to direct the student, it will be a repository for the great examples
+of the art.  These are the materials on which genius is to work, and
+without which the strongest intellect may be fruitlessly or deviously
+employed.  By studying these authentic models, that idea of excellence
+which is the result of the accumulated experience of past ages may be at
+once acquired, and the tardy and obstructed progress of our predecessors
+may teach us a shorter and easier way.  The student receives at one
+glance the principles which many artists have spent their whole lives in
+ascertaining; and, satisfied with their effect, is spared the painful
+investigation by which they come to be known and fixed.  How many men of
+great natural abilities have been lost to this nation for want of these
+advantages?  They never had an opportunity of seeing those masterly
+efforts of genius which at once kindle the whole soul, and force it into
+sudden and irresistible approbation.
+
+Raffaelle, it is true, had not the advantage of studying in an academy;
+but all Rome, and the works of Michael Angelo in particular, were to him
+an academy.  On the site of the Capel la Sistina he immediately from a
+dry, Gothic, and even insipid manner, which attends to the minute
+accidental discriminations of particular and individual objects, assumed
+that grand style of painting, which improves partial representation by
+the general and invariable ideas of nature.
+
+Every seminary of learning may be said to be surrounded with an
+atmosphere of floating knowledge, where every mind may imbibe somewhat
+congenial to its own original conceptions.  Knowledge, thus obtained, has
+always something more popular and useful than that which is forced upon
+the mind by private precepts or solitary meditation.  Besides, it is
+generally found that a youth more easily receives instruction from the
+companions of his studies, whose minds are nearly on a level with his
+own, than from those who are much his superiors; and it is from his
+equals only that he catches the fire of emulation.
+
+One advantage, I will venture to affirm, we shall have in our academy,
+which no other nation can boast.  We shall have nothing to unlearn.  To
+this praise the present race of artists have a just claim.  As far as
+they have yet proceeded they are right.  With us the exertions of genius
+will henceforward be directed to their proper objects.  It will not be as
+it has been in other schools, where he that travelled fastest only
+wandered farthest from the right way.
+
+Impressed as I am, therefore, with such a favourable opinion of my
+associates in this undertaking, it would ill become me to dictate to any
+of them.  But as these institutions have so often failed in other
+nations, and as it is natural to think with regret how much might have
+been done, and how little has been done, I must take leave to offer a few
+hints, by which those errors may be rectified, and those defects
+supplied.  These the professors and visitors may reject or adopt as they
+shall think proper.
+
+I would chiefly recommend that an implicit obedience to the rules of art,
+as established by the great masters, should be exacted from the _young_
+students.  That those models, which have passed through the approbation
+of ages, should be considered by them as perfect and infallible guides as
+subjects for their imitation, not their criticism.
+
+I am confident that this is the only efficacious method of making a
+progress in the arts; and that he who sets out with doubting will find
+life finished before he becomes master of the rudiments.  For it may be
+laid down as a maxim, that he who begins by presuming on his own sense
+has ended his studies as soon as he has commenced them.  Every
+opportunity, therefore, should be taken to discountenance that false and
+vulgar opinion that rules are the fetters of genius.  They are fetters
+only to men of no genius; as that armour, which upon the strong becomes
+an ornament and a defence, upon the weak and misshapen turns into a load,
+and cripples the body which it was made to protect.
+
+How much liberty may be taken to break through those rules, and, as the
+poet expresses it,
+
+   "To snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,"
+
+may be an after consideration, when the pupils become masters themselves.
+It is then, when their genius has received its utmost improvement, that
+rules may possibly be dispensed with.  But let us not destroy the
+scaffold until we have raised the building.
+
+The directors ought more particularly to watch over the genius of those
+students who, being more advanced, are arrived at that critical period of
+study, on the nice management of which their future turn of taste
+depends.  At that age it is natural for them to be more captivated with
+what is brilliant than with what is solid, and to prefer splendid
+negligence to painful and humiliating exactness.
+
+A facility in composing, a lively, and what is called a masterly handling
+the chalk or pencil, are, it must be confessed, captivating qualities to
+young minds, and become of course the objects of their ambition.  They
+endeavour to imitate those dazzling excellences, which they will find no
+great labour in attaining.  After much time spent in these frivolous
+pursuits, the difficulty will be to retreat; but it will be then too
+late; and there is scarce an instance of return to scrupulous labour
+after the mind has been debauched and deceived by this fallacious
+mastery.
+
+By this useless industry they are excluded from all power of advancing in
+real excellence.  Whilst boys, they are arrived at their utmost
+perfection; they have taken the shadow for the substance; and make that
+mechanical facility the chief excellence of the art, which is only an
+ornament, and of the merit of which few but painters themselves are
+judges.
+
+This seems to me to be one of the most dangerous sources of corruption;
+and I speak of it from experience, not as an error which may possibly
+happen, but which has actually infected all foreign academies.  The
+directors were probably pleased with this premature dexterity in their
+pupils, and praised their despatch at the expense of their correctness.
+
+But young men have not only this frivolous ambition of being thought
+masterly inciting them on one hand, but also their natural sloth tempting
+them on the other.  They are terrified at the prospect before them, of
+the toil required to attain exactness.  The impetuosity of youth is
+distrusted at the slow approaches of a regular siege, and desires, from
+mere impatience of labour, to take the citadel by storm.  They wish to
+find some shorter path to excellence, and hope to obtain the reward of
+eminence by other means than those which the indispensable rules of art
+have prescribed.  They must, therefore, be told again and again that
+labour is the only price of solid fame, and that whatever their force of
+genius may be, there is no easy method of becoming a good painter.
+
+When we read the lives of the most eminent painters, every page informs
+us that no part of their time was spent in dissipation.  Even an increase
+of fame served only to augment their industry.  To be convinced with what
+persevering assiduity they pursued their studies, we need only reflect on
+their method of proceeding in their most celebrated works.  When they
+conceived a subject, they first made a variety of sketches; then a
+finished drawing of the whole; after that a more correct drawing of every
+separate part, heads, hands, feet, and pieces of drapery; they then
+painted the picture, and after all re-touched it from the life.  The
+pictures, thus wrought with such pain, now appear like the effect of
+enchantment, and as if some mighty genius had struck them off at a blow.
+
+But, whilst diligence is thus recommended to the students, the visitors
+will take care that their diligence be effectual; that it be well
+directed and employed on the proper object.  A student is not always
+advancing because he is employed; he must apply his strength to that part
+of the art where the real difficulties lie; to that part which
+distinguishes it as a liberal art, and not by mistaken industry lose his
+time in that which is merely ornamental.  The students, instead of vying
+with each other which shall have the readiest band, should be taught to
+contend who shall have the purest and most correct outline, instead of
+striving which shall produce the brightest tint, or, curiously trifling
+endeavour to give the gloss of stuffs so as to appear real, let their
+ambition be directed to contend which shall dispose his drapery in the
+most graceful folds, which shall give the most grace and dignity to the
+human figure.
+
+I must beg leave to submit one thing more to the consideration of the
+visitors, which appears to me a matter of very great consequence, and the
+omission of which I think a principal defect in the method of education
+pursued in all the academies I have ever visited.  The error I mean is,
+that the students never draw exactly from the living models which they
+have before them.  It is not indeed their intention, nor are they
+directed to do it.  Their drawings resemble the model only in the
+attitude.  They change the form according to their vague and uncertain
+ideas of beauty, and make a drawing rather of what they think the figure
+ought to be than of what it appears.  I have thought this the obstacle
+that has stopped the progress of many young men of real genius; and I
+very much doubt whether a habit of drawing correctly what we see will not
+give a proportionable power of drawing correctly what we imagine.  He who
+endeavours to copy nicely the figure before him not only acquires a habit
+of exactness and precision, but is continually advancing in his knowledge
+of the human figure; and though he seems to superficial observers to make
+a slower progress, he will be found at last capable of adding (without
+running into capricious wildness) that grace and beauty which is
+necessary to be given to his more finished works, and which cannot be got
+by the moderns, as it was not acquired by the ancients, but by an
+attentive and well-compared study of the human form.
+
+What I think ought to enforce this method is, that it has been the
+practice (as may be seen by their drawings) of the great masters in the
+art.  I will mention a drawing of Raffaelle, "The Dispute of the
+Sacrament," the print of which, by Count Cailus, is in every hand.  It
+appears that he made his sketch from one model; and the habit he had of
+drawing exactly from the form before him appears by his making all the
+figures with the same cap, such as his model then happened to wear; so
+servile a copyist was this great man, even at a time when he was allowed
+to be at his highest pitch of excellence.
+
+I have seen also academy figures by Annibale Caracci, though he was often
+sufficiently licentious in his finished works, drawn with all the
+peculiarities of an individual model.
+
+This scrupulous exactness is so contrary to the practice of the
+academies, that it is not without great deference that I beg leave to
+recommend it to the consideration of the visitors, and submit it to them,
+whether the neglect of this method is not one of the reasons why students
+so often disappoint expectation, and being more than boys at sixteen,
+become less than men at thirty.
+
+In short, the method I recommend can only be detrimental when there are
+but few living forms to copy; for then students, by always drawing from
+one alone, will by habit be taught to overlook defects, and mistake
+deformity for beauty.  But of this there is no danger, since the council
+has determined to supply the academy with a variety of subjects; and
+indeed those laws which they have drawn up, and which the secretary will
+presently read for your confirmation, have in some measure precluded me
+from saying more upon this occasion.  Instead, therefore, of offering my
+advice, permit me to indulge my wishes, and express my hope, that this
+institution may answer the expectations of its royal founder; that the
+present age may vie in arts with that of Leo X. and that "the dignity of
+the dying art" (to make use of an expression of Pliny) may be revived
+under the reign of George III.
+
+
+
+A DISCOURSE
+Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, on the Distribution of
+the Prizes, December 11, 1769, by the President.
+
+
+Gentlemen,--I congratulate you on the honour which you have just
+received.  I have the highest opinion of your merits, and could wish to
+show my sense of them in something which possibly may be more useful to
+you than barren praise.  I could wish to lead you into such a course of
+study as may render your future progress answerable to your past
+improvement; and, whilst I applaud you for what has been done, remind you
+of how much yet remains to attain perfection.
+
+I flatter myself, that from the long experience I have had, and the
+unceasing assiduity with which I have pursued those studies, in which,
+like you, I have been engaged, I shall be acquitted of vanity in offering
+some hints to your consideration.  They are indeed in a great degree
+founded upon my own mistakes in the same pursuit.  But the history of
+errors properly managed often shortens the road to truth.  And although
+no method of study that I can offer will of itself conduct to excellence,
+yet it may preserve industry from being misapplied.
+
+In speaking to you of the theory of the art, I shall only consider it as
+it has a relation to the method of your studies.
+
+Dividing the study of painting into three distinct periods, I shall
+address you as having passed through the first of them, which is confined
+to the rudiments, including a facility of drawing any object that
+presents itself, a tolerable readiness in the management of colours, and
+an acquaintance with the most simple and obvious rules of composition.
+
+This first degree of proficiency is, in painting, what grammar is in
+literature, a general preparation to whatever species of the art the
+student may afterwards choose for his more particular application.  The
+power of drawing, modelling, and using colours is very properly called
+the language of the art; and in this language, the honours you have just
+received prove you to have made no inconsiderable progress.
+
+When the artist is once enabled to express himself with some degree of
+correctness, he must then endeavour to collect subjects for expression;
+to amass a stock of ideas, to be combined and varied as occasion may
+require.  He is now in the second period of study, in which his business
+is to learn all that has hitherto been known and done.  Having hitherto
+received instructions from a particular master, he is now to consider the
+art itself as his master.  He must extend his capacity to more sublime
+and general instructions.  Those perfections which lie scattered among
+various masters are now united in one general idea, which is henceforth
+to regulate his taste and enlarge his imagination.  With a variety of
+models thus before him, he will avoid that narrowness and poverty of
+conception which attends a bigoted admiration of a single master, and
+will cease to follow any favourite where he ceases to excel.  This period
+is, however, still a time of subjection and discipline.  Though the
+student will not resign himself blindly to any single authority when he
+may have the advantage of consulting many, he must still be afraid of
+trusting his own judgment, and of deviating into any track where he
+cannot find the footsteps of some former master.
+
+The third and last period emancipates the student from subjection to any
+authority but what he shall himself judge to be supported by reason.
+Confiding now in his own judgment, he will consider and separate those
+different principles to which different modes of beauty owe their
+original.  In the former period he sought only to know and combine
+excellence, wherever it was to be found, into one idea of perfection; in
+this he learns, what requires the most attentive survey and the subtle
+disquisition, to discriminate perfections that are incompatible with each
+other.
+
+He is from this time to regard himself as holding the same rank with
+those masters whom he before obeyed as teachers, and as exercising a sort
+of sovereignty over those rules which have hitherto restrained him.
+Comparing now no longer the performances of art with each other, but
+examining the art itself by the standard of nature, he corrects what is
+erroneous, supplies what is scanty, and adds by his own observation what
+the industry of his predecessors may have yet left wanting to perfection.
+Having well established his judgment, and stored his memory, he may now
+without fear try the power of his imagination.  The mind that has been
+thus disciplined may be indulged in the warmest enthusiasm, and venture
+to play on the borders of the wildest extravagance.  The habitual
+dignity, which long converse with the greatest minds has imparted to him,
+will display itself in all his attempts, and he will stand among his
+instructors, not as an imitator, but a rival.
+
+These are the different stages of the art.  But as I now address myself
+particularly to those students who have been this day rewarded for their
+happy passage through the first period, I can with no propriety suppose
+they want any help in the initiatory studies.  My present design is to
+direct your view to distant excellence, and to show you the readiest path
+that leads to it.  Of this I shall speak with such latitude as may leave
+the province of the professor uninvaded, and shall not anticipate those
+precepts which it is his business to give and your duty to understand.
+
+It is indisputably evident that a great part of every man's life must be
+employed in collecting materials for the exercise of genius.  Invention,
+strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images
+which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory.  Nothing
+can come of nothing.  He who has laid up no materials can produce no
+combinations.
+
+A student unacquainted with the attempts of former adventurers is always
+apt to overrate his own abilities, to mistake the most trifling
+excursions for discoveries of moment, and every coast new to him for a
+new-found country.  If by chance he passes beyond his usual limits, he
+congratulates his own arrival at those regions which they who have
+steered a better course have long left behind them.
+
+The productions of such minds are seldom distinguished by an air of
+originality: they are anticipated in their happiest efforts; and if they
+are found to differ in anything from their predecessors, it is only in
+irregular sallies and trifling conceits.  The more extensive therefore
+your acquaintance is with the works of those who have excelled the more
+extensive will be your powers of invention; and what may appear still
+more like a paradox, the more original will be your conceptions.  But the
+difficulty on this occasion is to determine who ought to be proposed as
+models of excellence, and who ought to be considered as the properest
+guides.
+
+To a young man just arrived in Italy, many of the present painters of
+that country are ready enough to obtrude their precepts, and to offer
+their own performances as examples of that perfection which they affect
+to recommend.  The modern, however, who recommends _himself_ as a
+standard, may justly be suspected as ignorant of the true end, and
+unacquainted with the proper object of the art which he professes.  To
+follow such a guide will not only retard the student, but mislead him.
+
+On whom, then, can he rely, or who shall show him the path that leads to
+excellence?  The answer is obvious: Those great masters who have
+travelled the same road with success are the most likely to conduct
+others.  The works of those who have stood the test of ages have a claim
+to that respect and veneration to which no modern can pretend.  The
+duration and stability of their fame is sufficient to evince that it has
+not been suspended upon the slender thread of fashion and caprice, but
+bound to the human heart by every tie of sympathetic approbation.
+
+There is no danger of studying too much the works of those great men, but
+how they may be studied to advantage is an inquiry of great importance.
+
+Some who have never raised their minds to the consideration of the real
+dignity of the art, and who rate the works of an artist in proportion as
+they excel, or are defective in the mechanical parts, look on theory as
+something that may enable them to talk but not to paint better, and
+confining themselves entirely to mechanical practice, very assiduously
+toil on in the drudgery of copying, and think they make a rapid progress
+while they faithfully exhibit the minutest part of a favourite picture.
+This appears to me a very tedious, and I think a very erroneous, method
+of proceeding.  Of every large composition, even of those which are most
+admired, a great part may be truly said to be common-place.  This, though
+it takes up much time in copying, conduces little to improvement.  I
+consider general copying as a delusive kind of industry; the student
+satisfies himself with the appearance of doing something; he falls into
+the dangerous habit of imitating without selecting, and of labouring
+without any determinate object; as it requires no effort of the mind, he
+sleeps over his work; and those powers of invention and composition which
+ought particularly to be called out and put in action lie torpid, and
+lose their energy for want of exercise.
+
+It is an observation that all must have made, how incapable those are of
+producing anything of their own who have spent much of their time in
+making finished copies.
+
+To suppose that the complication of powers, and variety of ideas
+necessary to that mind which aspires to the first honours ill the art of
+painting, can be obtained by the frigid contemplation of a few single
+models, is no less absurd than it would be in him who wishes to be a poet
+to imagine that by translating a tragedy he can acquire to himself
+sufficient knowledge of the appearances of nature, the operations of the
+passions, and the incidents of life.
+
+The great use in copying, if it be at all useful, should seem to be in
+learning to colour; yet even colouring will never be perfectly attained
+by servilely copying the mould before you.  An eye critically nice can
+only be formed by observing well-coloured pictures with attention: and by
+close inspection, and minute examination you will discover, at last, the
+manner of handling, the artifices of contrast, glazing, and other
+expedients, by which good colourists have raised the value of their
+tints, and by which nature has been so happily imitated.
+
+I must inform you, however, that old pictures deservedly celebrated for
+their colouring are often so changed by dirt and varnish, that we ought
+not to wonder if they do not appear equal to their reputation in the eyes
+of unexperienced painters, or young students.  An artist whose judgment
+is matured by long observation, considers rather what the picture once
+was, than what it is at present.  He has acquired a power by habit of
+seeing the brilliancy of tints through the cloud by which it is obscured.
+An exact imitation, therefore, of those pictures, is likely to fill the
+student's mind with false opinions, and to send him back a colourist of
+his own formation, with ideas equally remote from nature and from art,
+from the genuine practice of the masters and the real appearances of
+things.
+
+Following these rules, and using these precautions, when you have clearly
+and distinctly learned in what good colouring consists, you cannot do
+better than have recourse to nature herself, who is always at hand, and
+in comparison of whose true splendour the best coloured pictures are but
+faint and feeble.
+
+However, as the practice of copying is not entirely to be excluded, since
+the mechanical practice of painting is learned in some measure by it, let
+those choice parts only be selected which have recommended the work to
+notice.  If its excellence consists in its general effect, it would be
+proper to make slight sketches of the machinery and general management of
+the picture.  Those sketches should be kept always by you for the
+regulation of your style.  Instead of copying the touches of those great
+masters, copy only their conceptions.  Instead of treading in their
+footsteps, endeavour only to keep the same road.  Labour to invent on
+their general principles and way of thinking.  Possess yourself with
+their spirit.  Consider with yourself how a Michael Angelo or a Raffaelle
+would have treated this subject: and work yourself into a belief that
+your picture is to be seen and criticised by them when completed.  Even
+an attempt of this kind will rouse your powers.
+
+But as mere enthusiasm will carry you but a little way, let me recommend
+a practice that may be equivalent, and will perhaps more efficaciously
+contribute to your advancement, than even the verbal corrections of those
+masters themselves, could they be obtained.  What I would propose is,
+that you should enter into a kind of competition, by painting a similar
+subject, and making a companion to any picture that you consider as a
+model.  After you have finished your work, place it near the model, and
+compare them carefully together.  You will then not only see, but feel
+your own deficiencies more sensibly than by precepts, or any other means
+of instruction.  The true principles of painting will mingle with your
+thoughts.  Ideas thus fixed by sensible objects, will be certain and
+definitive; and sinking deep into the mind, will not only be more just,
+but more lasting than those presented to you by precepts only: which
+will, always be fleeting, variable, and undetermined.
+
+This method of comparing your own efforts with those of some great
+master, is indeed a severe and mortifying task, to which none will
+submit, but such as have great views, with fortitude sufficient to forego
+the gratifications of present vanity for future honour.  When the student
+has succeeded in some measure to his own satisfaction, and has
+felicitated himself on his success, to go voluntarily to a tribunal where
+he knows his vanity must be humbled, and all self-approbation must
+vanish, requires not only great resolution, but great humility.  To him,
+however, who has the Ambition to be a real master, the solid satisfaction
+which proceeds from a consciousness of his advancement (of which seeing
+his own faults is the first step) will very abundantly compensate for the
+mortification of present disappointment.  There is, besides, this
+alleviating circumstance.  Every discovery he makes, every acquisition of
+knowledge he attains, seems to proceed from his own sagacity; and thus he
+acquires a confidence in himself sufficient to keep up the resolution of
+perseverance.
+
+We all must have experienced how lazily, and consequently how
+ineffectually, instruction is received when forced upon the mind by
+others.  Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own
+teachers.  We prefer those instructions which we have given ourselves,
+from our affection to the instructor; and they are more effectual, from
+being received into the mind at the very time when it is most open and
+eager to receive them.
+
+With respect to the pictures that you are to choose for your models, I
+could wish that you would take the world's opinion rather than your own.
+In other words, I would have you choose those of established reputation
+rather than follow your own fancy.  If you should not admire them at
+first, you will, by endeavouring to imitate them, find that the world has
+not been mistaken.
+
+It is not an easy task to point out those various excellences for your
+imitation which he distributed amongst the various schools.  An endeavour
+to do this may perhaps be the subject of some future discourse.  I will,
+therefore, at present only recommend a model for style in painting, which
+is a branch of the art more immediately necessary to the young student.
+Style in painting is the same as in writing, a power over materials,
+whether words or colours, by which conceptions or sentiments are
+conveyed.  And in this Lodovico Carrache (I mean in his best works)
+appears to me to approach the nearest to perfection.  His unaffected
+breadth of light and shadow, the simplicity of colouring, which holding
+its proper rank, does not draw aside the least part of the attention from
+the subject, and the solemn effect of that twilight which seems diffused
+over his pictures, appear to me to correspond with grave and dignified
+subjects, better than the more artificial brilliancy of sunshine which
+enlightens the pictures of Titian.  Though Tintoret thought that Titian's
+colouring was the model of perfection, and would correspond even with the
+sublime of Michael Angelo; and that if Angelo had coloured like Titian,
+or Titian designed like Angelo, the world would once have had a perfect
+painter.
+
+It is our misfortune, however, that those works of Carrache which I would
+recommend to the student are not often found out of Bologna.  The "St.
+Francis in the midst of his Friars," "The Transfiguration," "The Birth of
+St. John the Baptist," "The Calling of St. Matthew," the "St. Jerome,"
+the fresco paintings in the Zampieri Palace, are all worthy the attention
+of the student.  And I think those who travel would do well to allot a
+much greater portion of their time to that city than it has been hitherto
+the custom to bestow.
+
+In this art, as in others, there are many teachers who profess to show
+the nearest way to excellence, and many expedients have been invented by
+which the toil of study might be saved.  But let no man be seduced to
+idleness by specious promises.  Excellence is never granted to man but as
+the reward of labour.  It argues, indeed, no small strength of mind to
+persevere in habits of industry, without the pleasure of perceiving those
+advances; which, like the hand of a clock, whilst they make hourly
+approaches to their point, yet proceed so slowly as to escape
+observation.  A facility of drawing, like that of playing upon a musical
+instrument, cannot be acquired but by an infinite number of acts.  I need
+not, therefore, enforce by many words the necessity of continual
+application; nor tell you that the port-crayon ought to be for ever in
+your hands.  Various methods will occur to you by which this power may be
+acquired.  I would particularly recommend that after your return from the
+academy (where I suppose your attendance to be constant) you would
+endeavour to draw the figure by memory.  I will even venture to add, that
+by perseverance in this custom, you will become able to draw the human
+figure tolerably correct, with as little effort of the mind as to trace
+with a pen the letters of the alphabet.
+
+That this facility is not unattainable, some members in this academy give
+a sufficient proof.  And, be assured, that if this power is not acquired
+whilst you are young, there will be no time for it afterwards: at least,
+the attempt will be attended with as much difficulty as those experience
+who learn to read or write after they have arrived to the age of
+maturity.
+
+But while I mention the port-crayon as the student's constant companion,
+he must still remember that the pencil is the instrument by which he must
+hope to obtain eminence.  What, therefore, I wish to impress upon you is,
+that whenever an opportunity offers, you paint your studies instead of
+drawing them.  This will give you such a facility in using colours, that
+in time they will arrange themselves under the pencil, even without the
+attention of the hand that conducts it.  If one act excluded the other,
+this advice could not with any propriety be given.  But if painting
+comprises both drawing and colouring and if by a short struggle of
+resolute industry the same expedition is attainable in painting as in
+drawing on paper, I cannot see what objection can justly be made to the
+practice; or why that should be done by parts, which may be done
+altogether.
+
+If we turn our eyes to the several schools of painting, and consider
+their respective excellences, we shall find that those who excel most in
+colouring pursued this method.  The Venetian and Flemish schools, which
+owe much of their fame to colouring, have enriched the cabinets of the
+collectors of drawings with very few examples.  Those of Titian, Paul
+Veronese, Tintoret, and the Bassans, are in general slight and
+undetermined.  Their sketches on paper are as rude as their pictures are
+excellent in regard to harmony of colouring.  Correggio and Barocci have
+left few, if any, finished drawings behind them.  And in the Flemish
+school, Rubens and Vandyke made their designs for the most part either in
+colours or in chiaroscuro.  It is as common to find studies of the
+Venetian and Flemish painters on canvas, as of the schools of Rome and
+Florence on paper.  Not but that many finished drawings are sold under
+the names of those masters.  Those, however, are undoubtedly the
+productions either of engravers or of their scholars who copied their
+works.
+
+These instructions I have ventured to offer from my own experience; but
+as they deviate widely from received opinions, I offer them with
+diffidence; and when better are suggested, shall retract them without
+regret.
+
+There is one precept, however, in which I shall only be opposed by the
+vain, the ignorant, and the idle.  I am not afraid that I shall repeat it
+too often.  You must have no dependence on your own genius.  If you have
+great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate
+abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.  Nothing is denied to
+well-directed labour: nothing is to be obtained without it.  Not to enter
+into metaphysical discussions on the nature or essence of genius, I will
+venture to assert, that assiduity unabated by difficulty, and a
+disposition eagerly directed to the object of its pursuit, will produce
+effects similar to those which some call the result of natural powers.
+
+Though a man cannot at all times, and in all places, paint or draw, yet
+the mind can prepare itself by laying in proper materials, at all times,
+and in all places.  Both Livy and Plutarch, in describing Philopoemen,
+one of the ablest generals of antiquity, have given us a striking picture
+of a mind always intent on its profession, and by assiduity obtaining
+those excellences which some all their lives vainly expect from Nature.  I
+shall quote the passage in Livy at length, as it runs parallel with the
+practice I would recommend to the painter, sculptor, or architect.
+
+"Philopoemen was a man eminent for his sagacity and experience in
+choosing ground, and in leading armies; to which he formed his mind by
+perpetual meditation, in times of peace as well as war.  When, in any
+occasional journey, he came to a straight difficult passage, if he was
+alone, he considered with himself, and if he was in company he asked his
+friends what it would be best to do if in this place they had found an
+enemy, either in the front, or in the rear, on the one side, or on the
+other.  'It might happen,' says he, 'that the enemy to be opposed might
+come on drawn up in regular lines, or in a tumultuous body, formed only
+by the nature of the place.'  He then considered a little what ground he
+should take; what number of soldiers he should use, and what arms he
+should give them; where he should lodge his carriages, his baggage, and
+the defenceless followers of his camp; how many guards, and of what kind,
+he should send to defend them; and whether it would be better to press
+forward along the pass, or recover by retreat his former station: he
+would consider likewise where his camp could most commodiously be formed;
+how much ground he should enclose within his trenches; where he should
+have the convenience of water; and where he might find plenty of wood and
+forage; and when he should break up his camp on the following day,
+through what road he could most safely pass, and in what form he should
+dispose his troops.  With such thoughts and disquisitions he had from his
+early years so exercised his mind, that on these occasions nothing could
+happen which he had not been already accustomed to consider."
+
+I cannot help imagining that I see a promising young painter, equally
+vigilant, whether at home, or abroad in the streets, or in the fields.
+Every object that presents itself is to him a lesson.  He regards all
+nature with a view to his profession; and combines her beauties, or
+corrects her defects.  He examines the countenance of men under the
+influence of passion; and often catches the most pleasing hints from
+subjects of turbulence or deformity.  Even bad pictures themselves supply
+him with useful documents; and, as Leonardo da Vinci has observed, he
+improves upon the fanciful images that are sometimes seen in the fire, or
+are accidentally sketched upon a discoloured wall.
+
+The artist who has his mind thus filled with ideas, and his hand made
+expert by practice, works with ease and readiness; whilst he who would
+have you believe that he is waiting for the inspirations of genius, is in
+reality at a loss how to beam, and is at last delivered of his monsters
+with difficulty and pain.
+
+The well-grounded painter, on the contrary, has only maturely to consider
+his subject, and all the mechanical parts of his art follow without his
+exertion, Conscious of the difficulty of obtaining what he possesses he
+makes no pretensions to secrets, except those of closer application.
+Without conceiving the smallest jealousy against others, he is contented
+that all shall be as great as himself who are willing to undergo the same
+fatigue: and as his pre-eminence depends not upon a trick, he is free
+from the painful suspicions of a juggler, who lives in perpetual fear
+lest his trick should be discovered.
+
+
+
+A DISCOURSE
+Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution of the
+Prizes, December, 14, 1770, by the President.
+
+
+Gentlemen,--It is not easy to speak with propriety to so many students of
+different ages and different degrees of advancement.  The mind requires
+nourishment adapted to its growth; and what may have promoted our earlier
+efforts, might, retard us in our nearer approaches to perfection.
+
+The first endeavours of a young painter, as I have remarked in a former
+discourse, must be employed in the attainment of mechanical dexterity,
+and confined to the mere imitation of the object before him.  Those who
+have advanced beyond the rudiments, may, perhaps, find advantage in
+reflecting on the advice which I have likewise given them, when I
+recommended the diligent study of the works of our great predecessors;
+but I at the same time endeavoured to guard them against an implicit
+submission to the authority of any one master, however excellent; or by a
+strict imitation of his manner, to preclude ourselves from the abundance
+and variety of nature.  I will now add that nature herself is not to be
+too closely copied.  There are excellences in the art of painting, beyond
+what is commonly called the imitation of nature: and these excellences I
+wish to point out.  The students who, having passed through the
+initiatory exercises, are more advanced in the art, and who, sure of
+their hand, have leisure to exert their understanding, must now be told
+that a mere copier of nature can never produce anything great; can never
+raise and enlarge the conceptions, or warm the heart of the spectator.
+
+The wish of the genuine painter must be more extensive: instead of
+endeavouring to amuse mankind with the minute neatness of his imitations,
+he must endeavour to improve them by the grandeur of his ideas; instead
+of seeking praise, by deceiving the superficial sense of the spectator,
+he must strive for fame, by captivating the imagination.
+
+The principle now laid down, that the perfection of this art does not
+consist in mere imitation, is far from being new or singular.  It is,
+indeed, supported by the general opinion of the enlightened part of
+mankind.  The poets, orators, and rhetoricians of antiquity, are
+continually enforcing this position, that all the arts receive their
+perfection from an ideal beauty, superior to what is to be found in
+individual nature.  They are ever referring to the practice of the
+painters and sculptors of their times, particularly Phidias (the
+favourite artist of antiquity), to illustrate their assertions.  As if
+they could not sufficiently express their admiration of his genius by
+what they knew, they have recourse to poetical enthusiasm.  They call it
+inspiration; a gift from heaven.  The artist is supposed to have ascended
+the celestial regions, to furnish his mind with this perfect idea of
+beauty.  "He," says Proclus, "who takes for his model such forms as
+nature produces, and confines himself to an exact imitation of them, will
+never attain to what is perfectly beautiful.  For the works of nature are
+full of disproportion, and fall very short of the true standard of
+beauty.  So that Phidias, when he formed his Jupiter, did not copy any
+object ever presents to his sight; but contemplated only that image which
+he had conceived in his mind from Homer's description."  And thus Cicero,
+speaking of the same Phidias: "Neither did this artist," says he, "when
+he carved the image of Jupiter or Minerva, set before him any one human
+figure as a pattern, which he was to copy; but having a more perfect idea
+of beauty fixed in his mind, this he steadily contemplated, and to the
+imitation of this all his skill and labour were directed."
+
+The moderns are not less convinced than the ancients of this superior
+power existing in the art; nor less conscious of its effects.  Every
+language has adopted terms expressive of this excellence.  The _Gusto
+grande_ of the Italians; the _Beau ideal_ of the French and the _great
+style_, _genius_, and _taste_ among the English, are but different
+appellations of the same thing.  It is this intellectual dignity, they
+say, that ennobles the painter's art; that lays the line between him and
+the mere mechanic; and produces those great effects in an instant, which
+eloquence and poetry, by slow and repeated efforts, are scarcely able to
+attain.
+
+Such is the warmth with which both the ancients and moderns speak of this
+divine principle of the art; but, as I have formerly observed,
+enthusiastic admiration seldom promotes knowledge.  Though a student by
+such praise may have his attention roused, and a desire excited, of
+running in this great career, yet it is possible that what has been said
+to excite, may only serve to deter him.  He examines his own mind, and
+perceives there nothing of that divine inspiration with which he is told
+so many others have been favoured.  He never travelled to heaven to
+gather new ideas; and he finds himself possessed of no other
+qualifications than what mere common observation and a plain
+understanding can confer.  Thus he becomes gloomy amidst the splendour of
+figurative declamation, and thinks it hopeless to pursue an object which
+he supposes out of the reach of human industry.
+
+But on this, as upon many other occasions, we ought to distinguish how
+much is to be given to enthusiasm, and how much to reason.  We ought to
+allow for, and we ought to commend, that strength of vivid expression
+which is necessary to convey, in its full force, the highest sense of the
+most complete effect of art; taking care at the same time not to lose in
+terms of vague admiration that solidity and truth of principle upon which
+alone we can reason, and may be enabled to practise.
+
+It is not easy to define in what this great style consists; nor to
+describe, by words, the proper means of acquiring it, if the mind of the
+student should be at all capable of such an acquisition.  Could we teach
+taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.  But
+though there neither are, nor can be, any precise invariable rules for
+the exercise or the acquisition of those great qualities, yet we may as
+truly say that they always operate in proportion to our attention in
+observing the works of nature, to our skill in selecting, and to our care
+in digesting, methodising, and comparing our observations.  There are
+many beauties in our art, that seem, at first, to lie without the reach
+of precept, and yet may easily be reduced to practical principles.
+Experience is all in all; but it is not every one who profits by
+experience; and most people err, not so much from want of capacity to
+find their object, as from not knowing what object to pursue.  This great
+ideal perfection and beauty are not to be sought in the heavens, but upon
+the earth.  They are about us, and upon every side of us.  But the power
+of discovering what is deformed in nature, or in other words, what is
+particular and uncommon, can be acquired only by experience; and the
+whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists, in my opinion, in being
+able to get above all singular forms, local customs, particularities, and
+details of every kind.
+
+All the objects which are exhibited to our view by nature, upon close
+examination will be found to have their blemishes and defects.  The most
+beautiful forms have something about them like weakness, minuteness, or
+imperfection.  But it is not every eye that perceives these blemishes.  It
+must be an eye long used to the contemplation and comparison of these
+forms; and which, by a long habit of observing what any set of objects of
+the same kind have in common, that alone can acquire the power of
+discerning what each wants in particular.  This long laborious comparison
+should be the first study of the painter who aims at the greatest style.
+By this means, he acquires a just idea of beautiful forms; he corrects
+nature by herself, her imperfect state by her more perfect.  His eye
+being enabled to distinguish the accidental deficiencies, excrescences,
+and deformities of things from their general figures, he makes out an
+abstract idea of their forms more perfect than any one original; and what
+may seem a paradox, he learns to design naturally by drawing his figures
+unlike to any one object.  This idea of the perfect state of nature,
+which the artist calls the ideal beauty, is the great leading principle
+by which works of genius are conducted.  By this Phidias acquired his
+fame.  He wrought upon a sober principle what has so much excited the
+enthusiasm of the world; and by this method you, who have courage to
+tread the same path, may acquire equal reputation.
+
+This is the idea which has acquired, and which seems to have a right to
+the epithet of Divine; as it may be said to preside, like a supreme
+judge, over all the productions of nature; appearing to be possessed of
+the will and intention of the Creator, as far as they regard the external
+form of living beings.
+
+When a man once possesses this idea in its perfection, there is no danger
+but that he will he sufficiently warmed by it himself, and be able to
+warm and ravish every one else.
+
+Thus it is from a reiterated experience, and a close comparison of the
+objects in nature, that an artist becomes possessed of the idea of that
+central form, if I may so express it, from which every deviation is
+deformity.  But the investigation of this form I grant is painful, and I
+know but of one method of shortening the road; this is, by a careful
+study of the works of the ancient sculptors; who, being indefatigable in
+the school of nature, have left models of that perfect form behind them,
+which an artist would prefer as supremely beautiful, who had spent his
+whole life in that single contemplation.  But if industry carried them
+thus far, may not you also hope for the same reward from the same labour?
+We have the same school opened to us that was opened to them; for nature
+denies her instructions to none who desire to become her pupils.
+
+To the principle I have laid down, that the idea of beauty in each
+species of beings is invariably one, it may be objected that in every
+particular species there are various central forms, which are separate
+and distinct from each other, and yet are undeniably beautiful; that in
+the human figure, for instance, the beauty of the Hercules is one, of the
+gladiator another, of the Apollo another, which makes so many different
+ideas of beauty.
+
+It is true, indeed, that these figures are each perfect in their kind,
+though of different characters and proportions; but still none of them is
+the representation of an individual, but of a class.  And as there is one
+general form, which, as I have said, belongs to the human kind at large,
+so in each of these classes there is one common idea and central form,
+which is the abstract of the various individual forms belonging to that
+class.  Thus, though the forms of childhood and age differ exceedingly,
+there is a common form in childhood, and a common form in age,--which is
+the more perfect, as it is more remote from all peculiarities.  But I
+must add further, that though the most perfect forms of each of the
+general divisions of the human figure are ideal, and superior to any
+individual form of that class, yet the highest perfection of the human
+figure is not to be found in any one of them.  It is not in the Hercules,
+nor in the gladiator, nor in the Apollo; but in that form which is taken
+from them all, and which partakes equally of the activity of the
+gladiator, of the delicacy of the Apollo, and of the muscular strength of
+the Hercules.  For perfect beauty in any species must combine all the
+characters which are beautiful in that species.  It cannot consist in any
+one to the exclusion of the rest: no one, therefore, must be predominant,
+that no one may be deficient.
+
+The knowledge of these different characters, and the power of separating
+and distinguishing them, is undoubtedly necessary to the painter, who is
+to vary his compositions with figures of various forms and proportions,
+though he is never to lose sight of the general idea of perfection in
+each kind.
+
+There is, likewise, a kind of symmetry or proportion, which may properly
+be said to belong to deformity.  A figure lean or corpulent, tall or
+short, though deviating from beauty, may still have a certain union of
+the various parts, which may contribute to make them, on the whole, not
+unpleasing.  When the artist has by diligent attention acquired a clear
+and distinct idea of beauty and symmetry; when he has reduced the variety
+of nature to the abstract idea; his next task will be to become
+acquainted with the genuine habits of nature, as distinguished from those
+of fashion.  For in the same manner, and on the same principles, as he
+has acquired the knowledge of the real forms of nature, distinct from
+accidental deformity, he must endeavour to separate simple chaste nature
+from those adventitious, those affected and forced airs or actions, with
+which she is loaded by modern education.
+
+Perhaps I cannot better explain what I mean than by reminding you of what
+was taught us by the Professor of Anatomy, in respect to the natural
+position and movement of the feet.  He observed that the fashion of
+turning, them outwards was contrary to the intent of nature, as might be
+seen from the structure of the bones, and from the weakness that
+proceeded from that manner of standing.  To this we may add the erect
+position of the head, the projection of the chest, the walking with
+straight knees, and many such actions, which are merely the result of
+fashion, and what nature never warranted, as we are sure that we have
+been taught them when children.
+
+I have mentioned but a few of those instances, in which vanity or caprice
+have contrived to distort and disfigure the human form; your own
+recollection will add to these a thousand more of ill-understood methods,
+that have been practised to disguise nature, among our dancing-masters,
+hair-dressers, and tailors, in their various schools of deformity.
+
+However the mechanic and ornamental arts may sacrifice to fashion, she
+must be entirely excluded from the art of painting; the painter must
+never mistake this capricious changeling for the genuine offspring of
+nature; he must divest himself of all prejudices in favour of his age or
+country; he must disregard all local and temporary ornaments, and look
+only on those general habits that are everywhere and always the same.  He
+addresses his works to the people of every country and every age; he
+calls upon posterity to be his spectators, and says with Zeuxis, _In
+aeternitatem pingo_.
+
+The neglect of separating modern fashions from the habits of nature,
+leads to that ridiculous style which has been practised by some painters
+who have given to Grecian heroes the airs and graces practised in the
+court of Louis XIV.; an absurdity almost as great as it would have been
+to have dressed them after the fashion of that court.
+
+To avoid this error, however, and to retain the true simplicity of
+nature, is a task more difficult than at first sight it may appear.  The
+prejudices in favour of the fashions and customs that we have been used
+to, and which are justly called a second nature, make it too often
+difficult to distinguish that which is natural from that which is the
+result of education; they frequently even give a predilection in favour
+of the artificial mode; and almost every one is apt to be guided by those
+local prejudices who has not chastised his mind, and regulated the
+instability of his affections, by the eternal invariable idea of nature.
+
+Here, then, as before, we must have recourse to the ancients as
+instructors.  It is from a careful study of their works that you will be
+enabled to attain to the real simplicity of nature; they will suggest
+many observations, which would probably escape you, if your study were
+confined to nature alone.  And, indeed, I cannot help suspecting, that in
+this instance the ancients had an easier task than the moderns.  They
+had, probably, little or nothing to unlearn, as their manners were nearly
+approaching to this desirable simplicity; while the modern artist, before
+he can see the truth of things, is obliged to remove a veil, with which
+the fashion of the times has thought proper to cover her.
+
+Having gone thus far in our investigation of the great style in painting;
+if we now should suppose that the artist has formed the true idea of
+beauty, which enables him to give his works a correct and perfect design;
+if we should suppose also that he has acquired a knowledge of the
+unadulterated habits of nature, which gives him simplicity; the rest of
+his talk is, perhaps, less than is generally imagined.  Beauty and
+simplicity have so great a share in the composition of a great style,
+that he who has acquired them has little else to learn.  It must not,
+indeed, be forgot that there is a nobleness of conception, which goes
+beyond anything in the mere exhibition, even of perfect form; there is an
+art of animating and dignifying the figures with intellectual grandeur,
+of impressing the appearance of philosophic wisdom or heroic virtue.  This
+can only be acquired by him that enlarges the sphere of his understanding
+by a variety of knowledge, and warms his imagination with the best
+productions of ancient and modern poetry.
+
+A hand thus exercised, and a mind thus instructed, will bring the art to
+a higher degree of excellence than, perhaps, it has hitherto attained in
+this country.  Such a student will disdain the humbler walks of painting,
+which, however profitable, can never assure him a permanent reputation.
+He will leave the meaner artist servilely to suppose that those are the
+best pictures which are most likely to deceive the spectator.  He will
+permit the lower painter, like the florist or collector of shells, to
+exhibit the minute discriminations which distinguish one object of the
+same species from another; while he, like the philosopher, will consider
+nature in the abstract, and represent in every one of his figures the
+character of its species.
+
+If deceiving the eye were the only business of the art, there is no
+doubt, indeed, but the minute painter would be more apt to succeed: but
+it is not the eye, it is the mind, which the painter of genius desires to
+address; nor will he waste a moment upon these smaller objects, which
+only serve to catch the sense, to divide the attention, and to counteract
+his great design of speaking to the heart.
+
+This is the ambition I could wish to excite in your minds; and the object
+I have had in my view, throughout this discourse, is that one great idea
+which gives to painting its true dignity, that entitles it to the name of
+a Liberal Art, and ranks it as a sister of poetry.
+
+It may possibly have happened to many young students whose application
+was sufficient to overcome all difficulties, and whose minds were capable
+of embracing the most extensive views, that they have, by a wrong
+direction originally given, spent their lives in the meaner walks of
+painting, without ever knowing there was a nobler to pursue.  "Albert
+Durer," as Vasari has justly remarked, "would probably have been one of
+the first painters of his age (and he lived in an era of great artists)
+had he been initiated into those great principles of the art which were
+so well understood and practised by his contemporaries in Italy.  But
+unluckily, having never seen or heard of any other manner, he considered
+his own, without doubt, as perfect."
+
+As for the various departments of painting, which do not presume to make
+such high pretensions, they are many.  None of them are without their
+merit, though none enter into competition with this great universal
+presiding idea of the art.  The painters who have applied themselves more
+particularly to low and vulgar characters, and who express with precision
+the various shades of passion, as they are exhibited by vulgar minds
+(such as we see in the works of Hogarth) deserve great praise; but as
+their genius has been employed on low and confined subjects, the praise
+that we give must be as limited as its object.  The merrymaking or
+quarrelling of the Boors of Teniers; the same sort of productions of
+Brouwer, or Ostade, are excellent in their kind; and the excellence and
+its praise will be in proportion, as, in those limited subjects and
+peculiar forms, they introduce more or less of the expression of those
+passions, as they appear in general and more enlarged nature.  This
+principle may be applied to the battle pieces of Bourgognone, the French
+gallantries of Watteau, and even beyond the exhibition of animal life, to
+the landscapes of Claude Lorraine, and the sea-views of Vandervelde.  All
+these painters have, in general, the same right, in different degrees, to
+the name of a painter, which a satirist, an epigrammatist, a sonnetteer,
+a writer of pastorals, or descriptive poetry, has to that of a poet.
+
+In the same rank, and, perhaps, of not so great merit, is the cold
+painter of portraits.  But his correct and just imitation of his object
+has its merit.  Even the painter of still life, whose highest ambition is
+to give a minute representation of every part of those low objects, which
+he sets before him, deserves praise in proportion to his attainment;
+because no part of this excellent art, so much the ornament of polished
+life, is destitute of value and use.  These, however, are by no means the
+views to which the mind of the student ought to be _primarily_ directed.
+By aiming at better things, if from particular inclination, or from the
+taste of the time and place he lives in, or from necessity, or from
+failure in the highest attempts, he is obliged to descend lower; he will
+bring into the lower sphere of art a grandeur of composition and
+character that will raise and ennoble his works far above their natural
+rank.
+
+A man is not weak, though he may not be able to wield the club of
+Hercules; nor does a man always practise that which he esteems the beat;
+but does that which he can best do.  In moderate attempts, there are many
+walks open to the artist.  But as the idea of beauty is of necessity but
+one, so there can be but one great mode of painting; the leading
+principle of which I have endeavoured to explain.
+
+I should be sorry if what is here recommended should be at all understood
+to countenance a careless or indetermined manner of painting.  For though
+the painter is to overlook the accidental discriminations of nature, he
+is to pronounce distinctly, and with precision, the general forms of
+things.  A firm and determined outline is one of the characteristics of
+the great style in painting; and, let me add, that he who possesses the
+knowledge of the exact form, that every part of nature ought to have,
+will be fond of expressing that knowledge with correctness and precision
+in all his works.
+
+To conclude: I have endeavoured to reduce the idea of beauty to general
+principles.  And I had the pleasure to observe that the professor of
+painting proceeded in the same method, when he showed you that the
+artifice of contrast was founded but on one principle.  And I am
+convinced that this is the only means of advancing science, of clearing
+the mind from a confused heap of contradictory observations, that do but
+perplex and puzzle the student when he compares them, or misguide him if
+he gives himself up to their authority; but bringing them under one
+general head can alone give rest and satisfaction to an inquisitive mind.
+
+
+
+A DISCOURSE
+Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution of the
+Prizes, December 10, 1771, by the President.
+
+
+Gentlemen,--The value and rank of every art is in proportion to the
+mental labour employed in it, or the mental pleasure produced by it.  As
+this principle is observed or neglected, our profession becomes either a
+liberal art or a mechanical trade.  In the hands of one man it makes the
+highest pretensions, as it is addressed to the noblest faculties, In
+those of another it is reduced to a mere matter of ornament, and the
+painter has but the humble province of furnishing our apartments with
+elegance.
+
+This exertion of mind, which is the only circumstance that truly ennobles
+our art, makes the great distinction between the Roman and Venetian
+schools.  I have formerly observed that perfect form is produced by
+leaving out particularities, and retaining only general ideas.  I shall
+now endeavour to show that this principle, which I have proved to be
+metaphysically just, extends itself to every part of the art; that it
+gives what is called the grand style to invention, to composition, to
+expression, and even to colouring and drapery.
+
+Invention in painting does not imply the invention of the subject, for
+that is commonly supplied by the poet or historian.  With respect to the
+choice, no subject can be proper that is not generally interesting.  It
+ought to be either some eminent instance of heroic action or heroic
+suffering.  There must be something either in the action or in the object
+in which men are universally concerned, and which powerfully strikes upon
+the public sympathy.
+
+Strictly speaking, indeed, no subject can be of universal, hardly can it
+be of general concern: but there are events and characters so popularly
+known in those countries where our art is in request, that they may be
+considered as sufficiently general for all our purposes.  Such are the
+great events of Greek and Roman fable and history, which early education
+and the usual course of reading have made familiar and interesting to all
+Europe, without being degraded by the vulgarism of ordinary life in any
+country.  Such, too, are the capital subjects of Scripture history,
+which, besides their general notoriety, become venerable by their
+connection with our religion.
+
+As it is required that the subject selected should be a general one, it
+is no less necessary that it should be kept unembarrassed with whatever
+may any way serve to divide the attention of the spectator.  Whenever a
+story is related, every man forms a picture in his mind of the action and
+the expression of the persons employed.  The power of representing this
+mental picture in canvas is what we call invention in a painter.  And as
+in the conception of this ideal picture the mind does not enter into the
+minute peculiarities of the dress, furniture, or scene of action, so when
+the painter comes to represent it he contrives those little necessary
+concomitant circumstances in such a manner that they shall strike the
+spectator no more than they did himself in his first conception of the
+story.
+
+I am very ready to allow that some circumstances of minuteness and
+particularity frequently tend to give an air of truth to a piece, and to
+interest the spectator in an extraordinary manner.  Such circumstances,
+therefore, cannot wholly be rejected; but if there be anything in the art
+which requires peculiar nicety of discernment, it is the disposition of
+these minute circumstantial parts which, according to the judgment
+employed in the choice, become so useful to truth or so injurious to
+grandeur.
+
+However, the usual and most dangerous error is on the side of minuteness,
+and, therefore, I think caution most necessary where most have failed.
+The general idea constitutes real excellence.  All smaller things,
+however perfect in their way, are to be sacrificed without mercy to the
+greater.  The painter will not inquire what things may be admitted
+without much censure.  He will not think it enough to show that they may
+be there; he will show that they must be there, that their absence would
+render his picture maimed and defective.
+
+Thus, though to the principal group a second or third be added, and a
+second and third mass of light, care must be yet taken that these
+subordinate actions and lights, neither each in particular, nor all
+together, come into any degree of competition with the principal; they
+should make a part of that whole which would be imperfect without them.
+To every part of painting this rule may be applied.  Even in portraits,
+the grace and, we may add, the likeness, consists more in taking the
+general air than in observing the effect similitude of every feature.
+
+Thus figures must have a ground whereon to stand; they must be clothed,
+there must be a background, there must be light and shadow; but none of
+these ought to appear to have taken up any part of the artist's
+attention.  They should be so managed as not even to catch that of the
+spectator.  We know well enough, when we analyse a piece, the difficulty
+and the subtlety with which an artist adjusts the background, drapery,
+and masses of light; we know that a considerable part of the grace and
+effect of his picture depends upon them; but this art is so much
+concealed, even to a judicious eye, that no remains of any of these
+subordinate parts occur to memory when the picture is not present.
+
+The great end of the art is to strike the imagination.  The painter is,
+therefore, to make no ostentation of the means by which this is done; the
+spectator is only to feel the result in his bosom.  An inferior artist is
+unwilling that any part of his industry should be lost upon the
+spectator.  He takes as much pains to discover, as the greater artist
+does to conceal, the marks of his subordinate assiduity.  In works of the
+lower kind everything appears studied and encumbered; it is all boastful
+art and open affectation.  The ignorant often part from such pictures
+with wonder in their mouths, and indifference in their hearts.
+
+But it is not enough in invention that the artist should restrain and
+keep under all the inferior parts of his subject; he must sometimes
+deviate from vulgar and strict historical truth in pursuing the grandeur
+of his design.
+
+How much the great style exacts from its professors to conceive and
+represent their subjects in a poetical manner, not confined to mere
+matter of fact, may be seen in the cartoons of Raffaelle.  In all the
+pictures in which the painter has represented the apostles, he has drawn
+them with great nobleness; he has given them as much dignity as the human
+figure is capable of receiving yet we are expressly told in Scripture
+they had no such respectable appearance; and of St. Paul in particular,
+we are told by himself, that his bodily presence was mean.  Alexander is
+said to have been of a low stature: a painter ought not so to represent
+him.  Agesilaus was low, lame, and of a mean appearance.  None of these
+defects ought to appear in a piece of which he is the hero.  In
+conformity to custom, I call this part of the art history painting; it
+ought to be called poetical, as in reality it is.
+
+All this is not falsifying any fact; it is taking an allowed poetical
+licence.  A painter of portraits retains the individual likeness; a
+painter of history shows the man by showing his actions.  A painter must
+compensate the natural deficiencies of his art.  He has but one sentence
+to utter, but one moment to exhibit.  He cannot, like the poet or
+historian, expatiate, and impress the mind with great veneration for the
+character of the hero or saint he represents, though he lets us know at
+the same time that the saint was deformed, or the hero lame.  The painter
+has no other means of giving an idea of the dignity of the mind, but by
+that external appearance which grandeur of thought does generally, though
+not always, impress on the countenance, and by that correspondence of
+figure to sentiment and situation which all men wish, but cannot command.
+The painter, who may in this one particular attain with ease what others
+desire in vain, ought to give all that he possibly can, since there are
+so many circumstances of true greatness that he cannot give at all.  He
+cannot make his hero talk like a great man; he must make him look like
+one.  For which reason he ought to be well studied in the analysis of
+those circumstances which constitute dignity of appearance in real life.
+
+As in invention, so likewise in, expression, care must be taken not to
+run into particularities, Those expressions alone should be given to the
+figures which their respective situations generally produce.  Nor is this
+enough; each person should also have that expression which men of his
+rank generally exhibit.  The joy or the grief of a character of dignity
+is not to be expressed in the same manner as a similar passion in a
+vulgar face.  Upon this principle Bernini, perhaps, may be subject to
+censure.  This sculptor, in many respects admirable, has given a very
+mean expression to his statue of David, who is represented as just going
+to throw the stone from the sling; and in order to give it the expression
+of energy he has made him biting his under-lip.  This expression is far
+from being general, and still farther from being dignified.  He might
+have seen it in an instance or two, and he mistook accident for
+universality.
+
+With respect to colouring, though it may appear at first a part of
+painting merely mechanical, yet it still has its rules, and those
+grounded upon that presiding principle which regulates both the great and
+the little in the study of a painter.  By this, the first effect of the
+picture is produced; and as this is performed the spectator, as he walks
+the gallery, will stop, or pass along.  To give a general air of grandeur
+at first view, all trifling or artful play of little lights or an
+attention to a variety of tints is to be avoided; a quietness and
+simplicity must reign over the whole work; to which a breadth of uniform
+and simple colour will very much contribute.  Grandeur of effect is
+produced by two different ways, which seem entirely opposed to each
+other.  One is, by reducing the colours to little more than chiaroscuro,
+which was often the practice of the Bolognian schools; and the other, by
+making the colours very distinct and forcible, such as we see in those of
+Rome and Florence; but still, the presiding principle of both those
+manners is simplicity.  Certainly, nothing can be more simple than
+monotony, and the distinct blue, red, and yellow colours which are seen
+in the draperies of the Roman and Florentine schools, though they have
+not that kind of harmony which is produced by a variety of broken and
+transparent colours, have that effect of grandeur that was intended.
+Perhaps these distinct colours strike the mind more forcibly, from there
+not being any great union between them; as martial music, which is
+intended to rouse the noble passions, has its effect from the sudden and
+strongly marked transitions from one note to another, which that style of
+music requires; whilst in that which is intended to move the softer
+passions the notes imperceptibly melt into one another.
+
+In the same manner as the historical painter never enters into the detail
+of colours, so neither does he debase his conceptions with minute
+attention to the discriminations of drapery.  It is the inferior style
+that marks the variety of stuffs.  With him, the clothing is neither
+woollen, nor linen, nor silk, satin, or velvet: it is drapery; it is
+nothing more.  The art of disposing the foldings of the drapery make a
+very considerable part of the painter's study.  To make it merely natural
+is a mechanical operation, to which neither genius or taste are required;
+whereas, it requires the nicest judgment to dispose the drapery, so that
+the folds have an easy communication, and gracefully follow each other,
+with such natural negligence as to look like the effect of chance, and at
+the same time show the figure under it to the utmost advantage.
+
+Carlo Maratti was of opinion that the disposition of drapery was a more
+difficult art than even that of drawing the human figure; that a student
+might be more easily taught the latter than the former; as the rules of
+drapery, he said, could not be so well ascertained as those for
+delineating a correct form, This, perhaps, is a proof how willingly we
+favour our own peculiar excellence.  Carlo Maratti is said to have valued
+himself particularly upon his skill in this part of the art yet in him
+the disposition appears so artificial, that he is inferior to Raffaelle,
+even in that which gave him his best claim to reputation.
+
+Such is the great principle by which we must be directed in the nobler
+branches of our art.  Upon this principle the Roman, the Florentine, the
+Bolognese schools, have formed their practice; and by this they have
+deservedly obtained the highest praise.  These are the three great
+schools of the world in the epic style.  The best of the French school,
+Poussin, Le Sueur, and Le Brun, have formed themselves upon these models,
+and consequently may be said, though Frenchmen, to be a colony from the
+Roman school.  Next to these, but in a very different style of
+excellence, we may rank the Venetian, together with the Flemish and the
+Dutch schools, all professing to depart from the great purposes of
+painting, and catching at applause by inferior qualities.
+
+I am not ignorant that some will censure me for placing the Venetians in
+this inferior class, and many of the warmest admirers of painting will
+think them unjustly degraded; but I wish not to be misunderstood.  Though
+I can by no means allow them to hold any rank with the nobler schools of
+painting, they accomplished perfectly the thing they attempted.  But as
+mere elegance is their principal object, as they seem more willing to
+dazzle than to affect, it can be no injury to them to suppose that their
+practice is useful only to its proper end.  But what may heighten the
+elegant may degrade the sublime.  There is a simplicity, and I may add,
+severity, in the great manner, which is, I am afraid, almost incompatible
+with this comparatively sensual style.
+
+Tintoret, Paul Veronese, and others of the Venetian schools, seem to have
+painted with no other purpose than to be admired for their skill and
+expertness in the mechanism of painting, and to make a parade of that art
+which, as I before observed, the higher style requires its followers to
+conceal.
+
+In a conference of the French Academy, at which were present Le Brun,
+Sebastian Bourdon, and all the eminent artists of that age, one of the
+academicians desired to have their opinion on the conduct of Paul
+Veronese, who, though a painter of great consideration, had, contrary to
+the strict rules of art, in his picture of Perseus and Andromeda,
+represented the principal figure in shade.  To this question no
+satisfactory answer was then given.  But I will venture to say, that if
+they had considered the class of the artist, and ranked him as an
+ornamental painter, there would have been no difficulty in answering: "It
+was unreasonable to expect what was never intended.  His intention was
+solely to produce an effect of light and Shadow; everything was to be
+sacrificed to that intent, and the capricious composition of that picture
+suited very well with the style he professed."
+
+Young minds are indeed too apt to be captivated by this splendour of
+style, and that of the Venetians will be particularly pleasing; for by
+them all those parts of the art that give pleasure to the eye or sense
+have been cultivated with care, and carried to the degree nearest to
+perfection.  The powers exerted in the mechanical part of the art have
+been called the language of painters; but we must say, that it is but
+poor eloquence which only shows that the orator can talk.  Words should
+be employed as the means, not as the end: language is the instrument,
+conviction is the work.
+
+The language of painting must indeed be allowed these masters; but even
+in that they have shown more copiousness than choice, and more luxuriancy
+than judgment.  If we consider the uninteresting subjects of their
+invention, or at least the uninteresting manner in which they are
+treated; if we attend to their capricious composition, their violent and
+affected contrasts, whether of figures, or of light and shadow, the
+richness of their drapery, and, at the same time, the mean effect which
+the discrimination of stuffs gives to their pictures; if to these we add
+their total inattention to expression, and then reflect on the
+conceptions and the learning of Michael Angelo, or the simplicity of
+Raffaelle, we can no longer dwell on the comparison.  Even in colouring,
+if we compare the quietness and chastity of the Bolognese pencil to the
+bustle and tumult that fills every part of, a Venetian picture, without
+the least attempt to interest the passions, their boasted art will appear
+a mere struggle without effect; an empty tale told by an idiot, full of
+sound and fury, signifying nothing.
+
+Such as suppose that the great style might happily be blended with the
+ornamental, that the simple, grave, and majestic dignity of Raffaelle
+could unite with the glow and bustle of a Paulo or Tintoret, are totally
+mistaken.  The principles by which each are attained are so contrary to
+each other, that they seem, in my opinion, incompatible, and as
+impossible to exist together, as to unite in the mind at the same time
+the most sublime ideas and the lowest sensuality.
+
+The subjects of the Venetian painters are mostly such as give them an
+opportunity of introducing a great number of figures, such as feasts,
+marriages, and processions, public martyrdoms, or miracles.  I can easily
+conceive that Paul Veronese, if he were asked, would say that no subject
+was proper for an historical picture but such as admitted at least forty
+figures; for in a less number, he would assert, there could be no
+opportunity of the painter's showing his art in composition, his
+dexterity of managing and disposing the masses of light, and groups of
+figures, and of introducing a variety of Eastern dresses and characters
+in their rich stuffs.
+
+But the thing is very different with a pupil of the greater schools.
+Annibale Caracci thought twelve figures sufficient for any story: he
+conceived that more would contribute to no end but to fill space; that
+they would, be but cold spectators of the general action, or, to use his
+own expression, that they would be figures to be let.  Besides, it is
+impossible for a picture composed of so many parts to have that effect,
+so indispensably necessary to grandeur, of one complete whole.  However
+contradictory it may be in geometry, it is true in taste, that many
+little things will not make a great one.  The sublime impresses the mind
+at once with one great idea; it is a single blow: the elegant indeed may
+be produced by a repetition, by an accumulation of many minute
+circumstances.
+
+However great the difference is between the composition of the Venetian
+and the rest of the Italian schools, there is full as great a disparity
+in the effect of their pictures as produced by colours.  And though in
+this respect the Venetians must be allowed extraordinary skill, yet even
+that skill, as they have employed it, will but ill correspond with the
+great style.  Their colouring is not only too brilliant, but, I will
+venture to say, too harmonious to produce that solidity, steadiness, and
+simplicity of effect which heroic subjects require, and which simple or
+grave colours only can give to a work.  That they are to be cautiously
+studied by those who are ambitious of treading the great walk of history
+is confirmed, if it wants confirmation, by the greatest of all
+authorities, Michael Angelo.  This wonderful man, after having seen a
+picture by Titian, told Vasari, who accompanied him, "that he liked much
+his colouring and manner; but then he added, that it was a pity the
+Venetian painters did not learn to draw correctly in their early youth,
+and adopt a better manner of study."
+
+By this it appears that the principal attention of the Venetian painters,
+in the opinion of Michael Angelo, seemed to be engrossed by the study of
+colours, to the neglect of the ideal beauty of form, or propriety of
+expression.  But if general censure was given to that school from the
+sight of a picture of Titian, how much more heavily, and more justly,
+would the censure fall on Paulo Veronese, or more especially on Tintoret?
+And here I cannot avoid citing Vasari's opinion of the style and manner
+of Tintoret.  "Of all the extraordinary geniuses," says he, "that have
+ever practised the art of painting, for wild, capricious, extravagant,
+and fantastical inventions, for furious impetuosity and boldness in the
+execution of his work, there is none like Tintoret; his strange whims are
+even beyond extravagance; and his works seem to be produced rather by
+chance than in consequence of any previous design, as if he wanted to
+convince the world that, the art was a trifle, and of the most easy
+attainment."
+
+For my own part, when I speak of the Venetian painters, I wish to be
+understood to mean Paulo Veronese and Tintoret, to the exclusion of
+Titian; for though his style is not so pure as that of many other of the
+Italian schools, yet there is a sort of senatorial dignity about him,
+which, however awkward in his imitators, seems to become him exceedingly.
+His portraits alone, from the nobleness and simplicity of character which
+he always gave them, will entitle him to the greatest respect, as he
+undoubtedly stands in the first rank in this branch of the art.
+
+It is not with Titian, but with the seducing qualities of the two former,
+that I could wish to caution you, against being too much captivated.
+These are the persons who may be said to have exhausted all the powers of
+florid eloquence, to debauch the young and unexperienced, and have,
+without doubt, been the cause of turning off the attention of the
+connoisseur and of the patron of art, as well as that of the painter,
+from those higher excellences of which the art is capable, and which
+ought to be required in every considerable production.  By them, and
+their imitators, a style merely ornamental has been disseminated
+throughout all Europe.  Rubens carried it to Flanders, Voet to France,
+and Luca Giordano to Spain and Naples.
+
+The Venetian is indeed the most splendid of the schools of elegance; and
+it is not without reason that the best performances in this lower school
+are valued higher than the second-rate performances of those above them;
+for every picture has value when it has a decided character, and is
+excellent in its kind.  But the student must take care not to be so much
+dazzled with this splendour as to be tempted to imitate what must
+ultimately lead from perfection.  Poussin, whose eye was always steadily
+fixed on the sublime, has been often heard to say, "That a particular
+attention to colouring was an obstacle to the student in his progress to
+the great end and design of the art; and that he who attaches himself to
+this principal end will acquire by practice a reasonably good method of
+colouring."
+
+Though it be allowed that elaborate harmony of colouring, a brilliancy of
+tints, a soft and gradual transition from one to another, present to the
+eye what an harmonious concert of music does to the ear, it must be
+remembered that painting is not merely a gratification of the sight.  Such
+excellence, though properly cultivated where nothing higher than elegance
+is intended, is weak and unworthy of regard, when the work aspires to
+grandeur and sublimity.
+
+The same reasons that have been urged why a mixture of the Venetian style
+cannot improve the great style will hold good in regard to the Flemish
+and Dutch schools.  Indeed, the Flemish school, of which Rubens is the
+head, was formed upon that of the Venetian; like them, he took his
+figures too much from the people before him.  But it must be allowed in
+favour of the Venetians that he was more gross than they, and carried all
+their mistaken methods to a far greater excess.  In the Venetian school
+itself, where they all err from the same cause, there is a difference in
+the effect.  The difference between Paulo and Bassano seems to be only
+that one introduced Venetian gentlemen into his pictures, and the other
+the boors of the district of Bassano, and called them patriarchs and
+prophets.
+
+The painters of the Dutch school have still more locality.  With them, a
+history piece is properly a portrait of themselves; whether they describe
+the inside or outside of their houses, we have their own people engaged
+in their own peculiar occupations, working or drinking, playing or
+fighting.  The circumstances that enter into a picture of this kind are
+so far from giving a general view of human life that they exhibit all the
+minute particularities of a nation differing in several respects from the
+rest of mankind.  Yet, let them have their share of more humble praise.
+The painters of this school are excellent in their own way; they are only
+ridiculous when they attempt general history on their own narrow
+principles, and debase great events by the meanness of their characters.
+
+Some inferior dexterity, some extraordinary mechanical power, is
+apparently that from which they seek distinction.  Thus, we see, that
+school alone has the custom of representing candle-light, not as it
+really appears to us by night, but red, as it would illuminate objects to
+a spectator by day.  Such tricks, however pardonable in the little style,
+where petty effects are the sole end, are inexcusable in the greater,
+where the attention should never be drawn aside by trifles, but should be
+entirely occupied by the subject itself.
+
+The same local principles which characterise the Dutch school extend even
+to their landscape painters; and Rubens himself, who has painted many
+landscapes, has sometimes transgressed in this particular.  Their pieces
+in this way are, I think, always a representation of an individual spot,
+and each in its kind a very faithful but very confined portrait.
+
+Claude Lorraine, on the contrary, was convinced that taking nature as he
+found it seldom produced beauty.  His pictures are a composition of the
+various draughts which he has previously made from various beautiful
+scenes and prospects.  However, Rubens in some measure has made amends
+for the deficiency with which he is charged; he has contrived to raise
+and animate his otherwise uninteresting views, by introducing a rainbow,
+storm, or some particular accidental effect of light.  That the practice
+of Claude Lorraine, in respect to his choice, is to be adopted by
+landscape painters, in opposition to that of the Flemish and Dutch
+schools, there can be no doubt, as its truth is founded upon the same
+principle as that by which the historical painter acquires perfect form.
+But whether landscape painting has a right to aspire so far as to reject
+what the painters call accidents of nature is not easy to determine.  It
+is certain Claude Lorraine seldom, if ever, availed himself of those
+accidents; either he thought that such peculiarities were contrary to
+that style of general nature which he professed, or that it would catch
+the attention too strongly, and destroy that quietness and repose which
+he thought necessary to that kind of painting.
+
+A portrait painter likewise, when he attempts history, unless he is upon
+his guard, is likely to enter too much into the detail.  He too
+frequently makes his historical heads look like portraits; and this was
+once the custom amongst those old painters who revived the art before
+general ideas were practised or understood.  A history painter paints man
+in general; a portrait painter, a particular man, and consequently a
+defective model.
+
+Thus an habitual practice in the lower exercises of the art will prevent
+many from attaining the greater.  But such of us who move in these
+humbler walks of the profession are not ignorant that, as the natural
+dignity of the subject is less, the more all the little ornamental helps
+are necessary to its embellishment.  It would be ridiculous for a painter
+of domestic scenes, of portraits, landscapes, animals, or of still life,
+to say that he despised those qualities which have made the subordinate
+schools so famous.  The art of colouring, and the skilful management of
+light and shadow, are essential requisites in his confined labours.  If
+we descend still lower, what is the painter of fruit and flowers without
+the utmost art in colouring, and what the painters call handling; that
+is, a lightness of pencil that implies great practice, and gives the
+appearance of being done with ease?  Some here, I believe, must remember
+a flower-painter whose boast it was that he scorned to paint for the
+million; no, he professed to paint in the true Italian taste; and
+despising the crowd, called strenuously upon the few to admire him.  His
+idea of the Italian taste was to paint as black and dirty as he could,
+and to leave all clearness and brilliancy of colouring to those who were
+fonder of money than of immortality.  The consequence was such as might
+be expected.  For these pretty excellences are here essential beauties;
+and without this merit the artist's work will be more short-lived than
+the objects of his imitation.
+
+From what has been advanced, we must now be convinced that there are two
+distinct styles in history painting: the grand, and the splendid or
+ornamental.
+
+The great style stands alone, and does not require, perhaps does not so
+well admit, any addition from inferior beauties.  The ornamental style
+also possesses its own peculiar merit.  However, though the union of the
+two may make a sort of composite style, yet that style is likely to be
+more imperfect than either of those which go to its composition.  Both
+kinds have merit, and may be excellent though in different ranks, if
+uniformity be preserved, and the general and particular ideas of nature
+be not mixed.  Even the meanest of them is difficult enough to attain;
+and the first place being already occupied by the great artists in either
+department, some of those who followed thought there was less room for
+them, and feeling the impulse of ambition and the desire of novelty, and
+being at the same time perhaps willing to take the shortest way, they
+endeavoured to make for themselves a place between both.  This they have
+effected by forming a union of the different orders.  But as the grave
+and majestic style would suffer by a union with the florid and gay, so
+also has the Venetian ornament in some respect been injured by attempting
+an alliance with simplicity.
+
+It may be asserted that the great style is always more or less
+contaminated by any meaner mixture.  But it happens in a few instances
+that the lower may be improved by borrowing from the grand.  Thus, if a
+portrait painter is desirous to raise and improve his subject, he has no
+other means than by approaching it to a general idea.  He leaves out all
+the minute breaks and peculiarities in the face, and changes the dress
+from a temporary fashion to one more permanent, which has annexed to it
+no ideas of meanness from its being familiar to us.  But if an exact
+resemblance of an individual be considered as the sole object to be aimed
+at, the portrait painter will be apt to lose more than he gains by the
+acquired dignity taken from general nature.  It is very difficult to
+ennoble the character of a countenance but at the expense of the
+likeness, which is what is most generally required by such as sit to the
+painter.
+
+Of those who have practised the composite style, and have succeeded in
+this perilous attempt, perhaps the foremost is Correggio.  His style is
+founded upon modern grace and elegance, to which is super, added
+something of the simplicity of the grand style.  A breadth of light and
+colour, the general ideas of the drapery, an uninterrupted flow of
+outline, all conspire to this effect.  Next him (perhaps equal to him)
+Parmegiano has dignified the genteelness of modern effeminacy by uniting
+it with the simplicity of the ancients and the grandeur and severity of
+Michael Angelo.  It must be confessed, however, that these two
+extraordinary men, by endeavouring to give the utmost degree of grace,
+have sometimes, perhaps, exceeded its boundaries, and have fallen into
+the most hateful of all hateful qualities, affectation.  Indeed, it is
+the peculiar characteristic of men of genius to be afraid of coldness and
+insipidity, from which they think they never can be too far removed.  It
+particularly happens to these great masters of grace and elegance.  They
+often boldly drive on to the very verge of ridicule; the spectator is
+alarmed, but at the same time admires their vigour and intrepidity.
+
+   Strange graces still, and stranger flights they had,
+   . . .
+   Yet ne'er so sure our passion to create
+   Ae when they touch'd the brink of all we hate.
+
+The errors of genius, however, are pardonable, and none even of the more
+exalted painters are wholly free from them; but they have taught us, by
+the rectitude of their general practice, to correct their own affected or
+accidental deviation.  The very first have not been always upon their
+guard, and perhaps there is not a fault but what may take shelter under
+the most venerable authorities; yet that style only is perfect in which
+the noblest principles are uniformly pursued; and those masters only are
+entitled to the first rank in, our estimation who have enlarged the
+boundaries of their art, and have raised it to its highest dignity, by
+exhibiting the general ideas of nature.
+
+On the whole, it seems to me that there is but one presiding principle
+which regulates and gives stability to every art.  The works, whether of
+poets, painters, moralists, or historians, which are built upon general
+nature, live for ever; while those which depend for their existence on
+particular customs and habits, a partial view of nature, or the
+fluctuation of fashion, can only be coeval with that which first raised
+them from obscurity.  Present time and future maybe considered as rivals,
+and he who solicits the one must expect to be discountenanced by the
+other.
+
+
+
+A DISCOURSE
+Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution of the
+Prizes, December 10, 1772, by the President.
+
+
+Gentlemen,--I purpose to carry on in this discourse the subject which I
+began in my last.  It was my wish upon that occasion to incite you to
+pursue the higher excellences of the art.  But I fear that in this
+particular I have been misunderstood.  Some are ready to imagine, when
+any of their favourite acquirements in the art are properly classed, that
+they are utterly disgraced.  This is a very great mistake: nothing has
+its proper lustre but in its proper place.  That which is most worthy of
+esteem in its allotted sphere becomes an object, not of respect, but of
+derision, when it is forced into a higher, to which it is not suited; and
+there it becomes doubly a source of disorder, by occupying a situation
+which is not natural to it, and by putting down from the first place what
+is in reality of too much magnitude to become with grace and proportion
+that subordinate station, to which something of less value would be much
+better suited.
+
+My advice in a word is this: keep your principal attention fixed upon the
+higher excellences.  If you compass them and compass nothing more, you
+are still in the first class.  We may regret the innumerable beauties
+which you may want: you may be very imperfect: but still, you are an
+imperfect person of the highest order.
+
+If, when you have got thus far, you can add any, or all, of the
+subordinate qualifications, it is my wish and advice that you should not
+neglect them.
+
+But this is as much a matter of circumspection and caution at least as of
+eagerness and pursuit.
+
+The mind is apt to be distracted by a multiplicity of pursuits; and that
+scale of perfection, which I wish always to be preserved, is in the
+greatest danger of being totally disordered, and even inverted.
+
+Some excellences bear to be united, and are improved by union, others are
+of a discordant nature; and the attempt to join them only produces a
+harsher jarring of incongruent principles.
+
+The attempt to unite contrary excellences (of form, for instance) in a
+single figure, can never escape degenerating into the monstrous, but by
+sinking into the insipid, taking away its marked character, and weakening
+its expression.
+
+This remark is true to a certain degree with regard to the passions.  If
+you mean to preserve the most perfect beauty in its most perfect state,
+you cannot express the passions, which produce (all of them) distortion
+and deformity, more or less, in the most beautiful faces.
+
+Guido, from want of choice in adapting his subject to his ideas and his
+powers, or in attempting to preserve beauty where it could not be
+preserved has in this respect succeeded very ill.  His figures are often
+engaged in subjects that required great expression: yet his "Judith and
+Holofernes," the "Daughter of Herodias with the Baptist's Head," the
+"Andromeda," and even the "Mothers of the Innocents," have little more
+expression than his "Venus attired by the Graces."
+
+Obvious as these remarks appear, there are many writers on our art, who,
+not being of the profession, and consequently not knowing what can or
+what cannot be done, have been very liberal of absurd praises in their
+descriptions of favourite works.  They always find in them what they are
+resolved to find.  They praise excellences that can hardly exist
+together, and above all things are fond of describing with great
+exactness the expression of a mixed passion, which more particularly
+appears to me out of the reach of our art.
+
+Such are many disquisitions which I have read on some of the cartoons and
+other pictures of Raffaelle, where the critics have described their own
+imagination; or indeed where the excellent master himself may have
+attempted this expression of passions above the powers of the art; and
+has, therefore, by an indistinct and imperfect marking, left room for
+every imagination, with equal probability to find a passion of his own.
+What has been, and what can be done in the art, is sufficiently
+difficult; we need not be mortified or discouraged for not being able to
+execute the conceptions of a romantic imagination.  Art has its
+boundaries, though imagination has none.  We can easily, like the
+ancients, suppose a Jupiter to be possessed of all those powers and
+perfections which the subordinate Deities were endowed with separately.
+Yet, when they employed their art to represent him, they confined his
+character to majesty alone.  Pliny, therefore, though we are under great
+obligations to him for the information he has given us in relation to the
+works of the ancient artists, is very frequently wrong when he speaks of
+them, which he does very often in the style of many of our modern
+connoisseurs.  He observes that in a statue of Paris, by Fuphranor, you
+might discover at the same time three different characters; the dignity
+of a judge of the goddesses, the lover of Helen, and the conqueror of
+Achilles.  A statue in which you endeavour to unite stately dignity,
+youthful elegance, and stern valour, must surely possess none of these to
+any eminent degree.
+
+From hence it appears that there is much difficulty as well as danger in
+an endeavour to concentrate upon a single subject those various powers
+which, rising from different points, naturally move in different
+directions.
+
+The summit of excellence seems to be an assemblage of contrary qualities,
+but mixed, in such proportions, that no one part is found to counteract
+the other.  How hard this is to be attained in every art, those only know
+who have made the greatest progress in their respective professions.
+
+To conclude what I have to say on this part of the subject, which I think
+of great importance, I wish you to understand that I do not discourage
+the younger students from the noble attempt of uniting all the
+excellences of art, but to make them aware that, besides the difficulties
+which attend every arduous attempt, there is a peculiar difficulty in the
+choice of the excellences which ought to be united; I wish you to attend
+to this, that you may try yourselves, whenever you are capable of that
+trial, what you can, and what you cannot do: and that, instead of
+dissipating your natural faculties over the immense field of possible
+excellence, you may choose some particular walk in which you may exercise
+all your powers, in order each of you to be the first in his way.  If any
+man shall be master of such a transcendant, commanding, and ductile
+genius, as to enable him to rise to the highest, and to stoop to the
+lowest flights of art, and to sweep over all of them unobstructed and
+secure, he is fitter to give example than to receive instruction.
+
+Having said thus much on the union of excellences, I will next say
+something of the subordination in which various excellences ought to be
+kept.
+
+I am of opinion that the ornamental style, which in my discourse of last
+year I cautioned you against considering as principal, may not be wholly
+unworthy the attention of those who aim even at the grand style; when it
+is properly placed and properly reduced.
+
+But this study will be used with far better effect, if its principles are
+employed in softening the harshness and mitigating the rigour of the
+great style, than if in attempt to stand forward with any pretensions of
+its own to positive and original excellence.
+
+It was thus Lodovico Caracci, whose example I formerly recommended to
+you, employed it.  He was acquainted with the works both of Correggio and
+the Venetian painters, and knew the principles by which they produced
+those pleasing effects which at the first glance prepossess us so much in
+their favour; but he took only as much from each as would embellish, but
+not overpower, that manly strength and energy of style, which is his
+peculiar character.
+
+Since I have already expatiated so largely in my former discourse, and in
+my present, upon the styles and characters of painting, it will not be at
+all unsuitable to my subject if I mention to you some particulars
+relative to the leading principles, and capital works of those who
+excelled in the great style, that I may bring you from abstraction nearer
+to practice, and by exemplifying the propositions which I have laid down,
+enable you to understand more clearly what I would enforce.
+
+The principal works of modern art are in fresco, a mode of painting which
+excludes attention to minute elegancies: yet these works in fresco are
+the productions on which the fame of the greatest masters depend: such
+are the pictures of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle in the Vatican, to which
+we may add the cartoons, which, though not strictly to be called fresco,
+yet may be put under that denomination; and such are the works of Giulio
+Romano at Mantua.  If these performances were destroyed, with them would
+be lost the best part of the reputation of those illustrious painters,
+for these are justly considered as the greatest efforts of our art which
+the world can boast.  To these, therefore, we should principally direct
+our attention for higher excellences.  As for the lower arts, as they
+have been once discovered, they may be easily attained by those possessed
+of the former.
+
+Raffaelle, who stands in general foremost of the first painters, owes his
+reputation, as I have observed, to his excellence in the higher parts of
+the art.  Therefore, his works in fresco ought to be the first object of
+our study and attention.  His easel-works stand in a lower degree of
+estimation; for though he continually, to the day of his death,
+embellished his works more and more with the addition of these lower
+ornaments, which entirely make the merit of some, yet he never arrived at
+such perfection as to make him an object of imitation.  He never was able
+to conquer perfectly that dryness, or even littleness of manner, which he
+inherited from his master.  He never acquired that nicety of taste in
+colours, that breadth of light and shadow, that art and management of
+uniting light, to light, and shadow to shadow, so as to make the object
+rise out of the ground with that plenitude of effect so much admired in
+the works of Correggio.  When he painted in oil, his hand seemed to be so
+cramped and confined that he not only lost that facility and spirit, but
+I think even that correctness of form, which is so perfect and admirable
+in his fresco works.  I do not recollect any pictures of his of this
+kind, except perhaps the "Transfiguration," in which there are not some
+parts that appear to be even feebly drawn.  That this is not a necessary
+attendant on oil-painting, we have abundant instances in more modern
+painters.  Lodovico Caracci, for instance, preserved in his works in oil
+the same spirit, vigour, and correctness, which he had in fresco.  I have
+no desire to degrade Raffaelle from the high rank which he deservedly
+holds: but by comparing him with himself, he does not appear to me to be
+the same man in oil as in fresco.
+
+From those who have ambition to tread in this great walk of the art,
+Michael Angelo claims the next attention.  He did not possess so many
+excellences as Raffaelle, but those he had were of the highest kind.  He
+considered the art as consisting of little more than what may be attained
+by sculpture, correctness of form, and energy of character.  We ought not
+to expect more than an artist intends in his work.  He never attempted
+those lesser elegancies and graces in the art.  Vasari says, he never
+painted but one picture in oil, and resolved never to paint another,
+saying it was an employment only fit for women and children.
+
+If any man had a right to look down upon the lower accomplishments as
+beneath his attention, it was certainly Michael Angelo: nor can it be
+thought strange that such a mind should have slighted or have been
+withheld from paying due attention to all those graces and embellishments
+of art which have diffused such lustre over the works of other painters.
+
+It must be acknowledged likewise, that together with these, which we wish
+he had more attended to, he has rejected all the false though specious
+ornaments which disgrace the works even of the most esteemed artists; and
+I will venture to say, that when those higher excellences are more known
+and cultivated by the artists and the patrons of arts, his fame and
+credit will increase with our increasing knowledge.  His name will then
+be held in the same veneration as it was in the enlightened age of Leo
+the Tenth: and it is remarkable that the reputation of this truly great
+man has been continually declining as the art itself has declined.  For I
+must remark to you, that it has long been much on the decline, and that
+our only hope of its revival will consist in your being thoroughly
+sensible of its depravation and decay.  It is to Michael Angelo that we
+owe even the existence of Raffaelle; it is to him Raffaelle owes the
+grandeur of his style.  He was taught by him to elevate his thoughts, and
+to conceive his subjects with dignity.  His genius, however, formed to
+blaze and to shine, might, like fire in combustible matter, for ever have
+lain dormant if it had not caught a spark by its contact with Michael
+Angelo: and though it never burst out with that extraordinary heat and
+vehemence, yet it must be acknowledged to be a more pure, regular, and
+chaste flame.  Though our judgment will upon the whole decide in favour
+of Raffaelle: yet he never takes that firm hold and entire possession of
+the mind in such a manner as to desire nothing else, and feel nothing
+wanting.  The effect of the capital works of Michael Angelo perfectly
+correspond to what Bourchardon said he felt from reading Homer.  His
+whole frame appeared to himself to be enlarged, and all nature which
+surrounded him diminished to atoms.
+
+If we put those great artists in a light of comparison with each other,
+Raffaelle had more taste and fancy, Michael Angelo more genius and
+imagination.  The one excelled in beauty, the other in energy.  Michael
+Angelo has more of the poetical inspiration; his ideas are vast and
+sublime; his people are a superior order of beings; there is nothing
+about them, nothing in the air of their actions or their attitudes, or
+the style and cast of their very limbs or features, that puts one in mind
+of their belonging, to our own species.  Raffaelle's imagination is not
+so elevated; his figures are not so much disjoined from our own
+diminutive race of beings, though his ideas are chaste, noble, and of
+great conformity to their subjects.  Michael Angelo's works have a
+strong, peculiar, and marked character; they seem to proceed from his own
+mind entirely, and that mind so rich and abundant, that he never needed,
+or seemed to disdain, to look abroad for foreign help.  Raffaelle's
+materials are generally borrowed, though the noble structure is his own.
+The excellency of this extraordinary man lay in the propriety, beauty,
+and majesty of his characters, his judicious contrivance of his
+composition, correctness of drawing, purity of taste, and the skilful
+accommodation of other men's conceptions to his own purpose.  Nobody
+excelled him in that judgment, with which he united to his own
+observations on nature the energy of Michael Angelo, and the beauty and
+simplicity of the antique.  To the question, therefore, which ought to
+hold the first rank, Raffaelle or Michael Angelo, it must be answered,
+that if it is to be given to him who possessed a greater combination of
+the higher qualities of the art than any other man, there is no doubt but
+Raffaelle is the first.  But if, according to Longinus, the sublime,
+being the highest excellence that human composition can attain to,
+abundantly compensates the absence of every other beauty, and atones for
+all other deficiencies, then Michael Angelo demands the preference.
+
+These two extraordinary men carried some of the higher excellences of the
+art to a greater degree of perfection than probably they ever arrived at
+before.  They certainly have not been excelled, nor equalled since.  Many
+of their successors were induced to leave this great road as a beaten
+path, endeavouring to surprise and please by something uncommon or new.
+When this desire after novelty has proceeded from mere idleness or
+caprice, it is not worth the trouble of criticism; but when it has been
+in consequence of a busy mind of a peculiar complexion, it is always
+striking and interesting, never insipid.
+
+Such is the great style as it appears in those who possessed it at its
+height; in this, search after novelty in conception or in treating the
+subject has no place.
+
+But there is another style, which, though inferior to the former, has
+still great merit, because it shows that those who cultivated it were men
+of lively and vigorous imagination.  This I call the original or
+characteristical style; this, being less referred to any true architype
+existing either in general or particular nature, must be supported by the
+painter's consistency in the principles he has assumed, and in the union
+and harmony of his whole design.  The excellency of every style, but I
+think of the subordinate ones more especially, will very much depend on
+preserving that union and harmony between all the component parts, that
+they appear to hang well together, as if the whole proceeded from one
+mind.  It is in the works of art, as in the characters of men.  The
+faults or defects of some men seem to become them when they appear to be
+the natural growth, and of a piece with the rest of their character.  A
+faithful picture of a mind, though it be not of the most elevated kind,
+though it be irregular, wild, and incorrect, yet if it be marked with
+that spirit and firmness which characterises works of genius, will claim
+attention, and be more striking than a combination of excellences that do
+not seem to hang well together, or we may say than a work that possesses
+even all excellences, but those in a moderate degree.
+
+One of the strongest marked characters of this kind, which must be
+allowed to be subordinate to the great style, is that of Salvator Rosa.
+He gives us a peculiar cast of nature, which, though void of all grace,
+elegance, and simplicity; though it has nothing of that elevation and
+dignity which belongs to the grand style, yet has that sort of dignity
+which belongs to savage and uncultivated nature.  But what is most to be
+admired in him is the perfect correspondence which he observed between
+the subjects which he chose, and his manner of treating them.  Everything
+is of a piece: his rocks, trees, sky, even to his handling have the same
+rude and wild character which animates his figures.
+
+To him we may contrast the character of Carlo Maratti, who, in my own
+opinion, had no great vigour of mind or strength of original genius.  He
+rarely seizes the imagination by exhibiting the higher excellences, nor
+does he captivate us by that originality which attends the painter who
+thinks for himself.  He knew and practised all the rules of art, and from
+a composition of Raffaelle, Caracci, and Guido, made up a style, of which
+its only fault was, that it had no manifest defects and no striking
+beauties, and that the principles of his composition are never blended
+together, so as to form one uniform body, original in its kind, or
+excellent in any view.
+
+I will mention two other painters who, though entirely dissimilar, yet by
+being each consistent with himself, and possessing a manner entirely his
+own, have both gained reputation, though for very opposite
+accomplishments.
+
+The painters I mean are Rubens and Poussin.  Rubens I mention in this
+place, as I think him a remarkable instance of the same mind being seen
+in all the various parts of the art.  The whole is so much of a piece
+that one can scarce be brought to believe but that if any one of them had
+been more correct and perfect, his works would not be so complete as they
+now appear.  If we should allow a greater purity and correctness of
+drawing, his want of simplicity in composition, colouring, and drapery
+would appear more gross.
+
+In his composition his art is too apparent.  His figures have expression,
+and act with energy, but without simplicity or dignity.  His colouring,
+in which he is eminently skilled, is, notwithstanding, too much of what
+we call tinted.  Throughout the whole of his works there is a
+proportionable want of that nicety of distinction and elegance of mind
+which is required in the higher walks of painting; and to this want it
+may be in some degree ascribed that those qualities which make the
+excellency of this subordinate style appear in him with their greatest
+lustre.  Indeed, the facility with which he invented, the richness of his
+composition, the luxuriant harmony and brilliancy of his colouring, so
+dazzle the eye, that whilst his works continue before us we cannot help
+thinking that all his deficiencies are fully supplied.
+
+Opposed to this florid, careless, loose, and inaccurate style, that of
+the simple, careful, pure, and correct style of Poussin seems to be a
+complete contrast.
+
+Yet however opposite their characters, in one thing they agreed, both of
+them having a perfect correspondence between all the parts of their
+respective manners.
+
+One is not sure but every alteration of what is considered as defective
+in either, would destroy the effect of the whole.
+
+Poussin lived and conversed with the ancient statues so long, that he may
+be said to be better acquainted with then than with the people who were
+about him.  I have often thought that he carried his veneration for them
+so far as to wish to give his works the air of ancient paintings.  It is
+certain he copied some of the antique paintings, particularly the
+"Marriage in the Albrobrandini Palace at Rome," which I believe to be the
+best relique of those remote ages that has yet been found.
+
+No works of any modern has so much of the air of antique painting as
+those of Poussin.  His best performances have a remarkable dryness of
+manner, which, though by no means to be recommended for imitation, yet
+seems perfectly correspondent to that ancient simplicity which
+distinguishes his style.  Like Polidoro he studied them so much, that he
+acquired a habit of thinking in their way, and seemed to know perfectly
+the actions and gestures they would use on every occasion.
+
+Poussin in the latter part of his life changed from his dry manner to one
+much softer and richer, where there is a greater union between the
+figures and the ground, such as the "Seven Sacraments" in the Duke of
+Orleans' collection; but neither these, nor any in this manner, are at
+all comparable to many in his dry manner which we have in England.
+
+The favourite subjects of Poussin were ancient fables; and no painter was
+ever better qualified to paint such subjects, not only from his being
+eminently skilled in the knowledge of ceremonies, customs, and habits of
+the ancients, but from his being so well acquainted with the different
+characters which those who invented them gave their allegorical figures.
+Though Rubens has shown great fancy in his Satyrs, Silenuses, and Fauns,
+yet they are not that distinct separate class of beings which is
+carefully exhibited by the ancients and by Poussin.  Certainly when such
+subjects of antiquity are represented, nothing in the picture ought to
+remind us of modern times.  The mind is thrown back into antiquity, and
+nothing ought to be introduced that may tend to awaken it from the
+illusion.
+
+Poussin seemed to think that the style and the language in which such
+stories are told is not the worse for preserving some relish of the old
+way of painting which seemed to give a general uniformity to the whole,
+so that the mind was thrown back into antiquity not only by the subject,
+but the execution.
+
+If Poussin, in imitation of the ancients, represents Apollo driving his
+chariot out of the sea by way of representing the sun rising, if he
+personifies lakes and rivers, it is no ways offensive in him; but seems
+perfectly of a piece with the general air of the picture.  On the
+contrary, if the figures which people his pictures had a modern air or
+countenance, if they appeared like our countrymen, if the draperies were
+like cloth or silk of our manufacture, if the landscape had the
+appearance of a modern view, how ridiculous would Apollo appear instead
+of the sun, an old man or a nymph with an urn instead of a river or lake.
+
+I cannot avoid mentioning here a circumstance in portrait painting which
+may help to confirm what has been said.
+
+When a portrait is painted in the historical style, as it is neither an
+exact minute representation of an individual nor completely ideal, every
+circumstance ought to correspond to this mixture.  The simplicity of the
+antique air and attitude, however much to be admired, is ridiculous when
+joined to a figure in a modern dress.  It is not to my purpose to enter
+into the question at present, whether this mixed style ought to be
+adopted or not; yet if it is chosen it is necessary it should be complete
+and all of a piece: the difference of stuffs, for instance, which make
+the clothing, should be distinguished in the same degree as the head
+deviates from a general idea.
+
+Without this union, which I have so often recommended, a work can have no
+marked and determined character, which is the peculiar and constant
+evidence of genius.  But when this is accomplished to a high degree, it
+becomes in some sort a rival to that style which we have fixed as the
+highest.
+
+Thus I have given a sketch of the characters of Rubens and Salvator Rosa,
+as they appear to me to have the greatest uniformity of mind throughout
+their whole work.  But we may add to these, all these artists who are at
+the head of the class, and have had a school of imitators from Michael
+Angelo down to Watteau.  Upon the whole it appears that setting aside the
+ornamental style, there are two different paths, either of which a
+student may take without degrading the dignity of his art.  The first is
+to combine the higher excellences and embellish them to the greatest
+advantage.  The other is to carry one of these excellences to the highest
+degree.  But those who possess neither must be classed with them, who, as
+Shakespeare says, are men of no mark or likelihood.
+
+I inculcate as frequently as I can your forming yourselves upon great
+principles and great models.  Your time will be much misspent in every
+other pursuit.  Small excellences should be viewed, not studied; they
+ought to be viewed, because nothing ought to escape a painter's
+observation, but for no other reason.
+
+There is another caution which I wish to give you.  Be as select in those
+whom you endeavour to please, as in those whom you endeavour to imitate.
+Without the love of fame you can never do anything excellent; but by an
+excessive and undistinguishing thirst after it, you will come to have
+vulgar views; you will degrade your style; and your taste will be
+entirely corrupted.  It is certain that the lowest style will be the most
+popular, as it falls within the compass of ignorance itself; and the
+vulgar will always be pleased with what is natural in the confined and
+misunderstood sense of the word.
+
+One would wish that such depravation of taste should be counteracted,
+with such manly pride as Euripides expressed to the Athenians, who
+criticised his works, "I do not compose," says he, "my works in order to
+be corrected by you, but to instruct you."  It is true, to have a right
+to speak thus, a man must be a Euripides.  However, thus much may be
+allowed, that when an artist is sure that he is upon firm ground,
+supported by the authority and practice of his predecessors of the
+greatest reputation, he may then assume the boldness and intrepidity of
+genius; at any rate, he must not be tempted out of the right path by any
+tide of popularity that always accompanies the lower styles of painting.
+
+I mention this, because our exhibitions, that produce such admirable
+effects by nourishing emulation, and calling out genius, have also a
+mischievous tendency by seducing the painter to an ambition of pleasing
+indiscriminately the mixed multitude of people who resort to them.
+
+
+
+A DISCOURSE
+Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution of the
+Prizes, December 10, 1774, by the President.
+
+
+Gentlemen,--When I have taken the liberty of addressing you on the course
+and order of your studies, I never proposed to enter into a minute detail
+of the art.  This I have always left to the several professors, who
+pursue the end of our institution with the highest honour to themselves,
+and with the greatest advantage to the students.
+
+My purpose in the discourses I have held in the Academy is to lay down
+certain general ideas, which seem to me proper for the formation of a
+sound taste; principles necessary to guard the pupils against those
+errors into which the sanguine temper common at their time of life, has a
+tendency to lead them, and which have rendered abortive the hopes of so
+many successions of promising young men in all parts of Europe.
+
+I wish, also, to intercept and suppress those prejudices which
+particularly prevail when the mechanism of painting is come to its
+perfection, and which when they do prevail are certain to prevail to the
+utter destruction of the higher and more valuable parts of this literate
+and liberal profession.
+
+These two have been my principal purposes; they are still as much my
+concern as ever; and if I repeat my own ideas on the subject, you who
+know how fast mistake and prejudice, when neglected, gain ground upon
+truth and reason, will easily excuse me.  I only attempt to set the same
+thing in the greatest variety of lights.
+
+The subject of this discourse will be imitation, as far as a painter is
+concerned in it.  By imitation I do not mean imitation in its largest
+sense, but simply the following of other masters, and the advantage to be
+drawn from the study of their works.
+
+Those who have undertaken to write on our art, and have represented it as
+a kind of inspiration, as a gift bestowed upon peculiar favourites at
+their birth, seem to ensure a much more favourable disposition from their
+readers, and have a much more captivating and liberal air, than he who
+goes about to examine, coldly, whether there are any means by which this
+art may be acquired; how our mind may be strengthened and expanded, and
+what guides will show the way to eminence.
+
+It is very natural for those who are unacquainted with the cause of
+anything extraordinary to be astonished at the effect, and to consider it
+as a kind of magic.  They, who have never observed the gradation by which
+art is acquired, who see only what is the full result of long labour and
+application of an infinite number, and infinite variety of acts, are apt
+to conclude from their entire inability to do the same at once, that it
+is not only inaccessible to themselves, but can be done by those only who
+have some gift of the nature of inspiration bestowed upon them.
+
+The travellers into the East tell us that when the ignorant inhabitants
+of these countries are asked concerning the ruins of stately edifices yet
+remaining amongst them, the melancholy monuments of their former grandeur
+and long-lost science, they always answer that they were built by
+magicians.  The untaught mind finds a vast gulf between its own powers
+and these works of complicated art which it is utterly unable to fathom.
+And it supposes that such a void can be passed only by supernatural
+powers.
+
+And, as for artists themselves, it is by no means their interest to
+undeceive such judges, however conscious they may be of the very natural
+means by which the extraordinary powers were acquired; our art being
+intrinsically imitative, rejects this idea of inspiration more, perhaps,
+than any other.
+
+It is to avoid this plain confession of truth, as it should seem, that
+this imitation of masters--indeed, almost all imitation which implies a
+more regular and progressive method of attaining the ends of painting--has
+ever been particularly inveighed against with great keenness, both by
+ancient and modern writers.
+
+To derive all from native power, to owe nothing to another, is the praise
+which men, who do not much think what they are saying, bestow sometimes
+upon others, and sometimes on themselves; and their imaginary dignity is
+naturally heightened by a supercilious censure of the low, the barren,
+the grovelling, the servile imitator.  It would be no wonder if a
+student, frightened by these terrors and disgraceful epithets, with which
+the poor imitators are so often loaded, should let fall his pencil in
+mere despair, conscious how much he has been indebted to the labours of
+others, how little, how very little of his art was born with him; and,
+considering it as hopeless, to set about acquiring by the imitation of
+any human master what he is taught to suppose is matter of inspiration
+from heaven.
+
+Some allowance must be made for what is said in the gaiety or ambition of
+rhetoric.  We cannot suppose that any one can really mean to exclude all
+imitation of others.  A position so wild would scarce deserve a serious
+answer, for it is apparent, if we were forbid to make use of the
+advantages which our predecessors afford us, the art would be always to
+begin, and consequently remain always in its infant state; and it is a
+common observation that no art was ever invented and carried to
+perfection at the same time.
+
+But to bring us entirely to reason and sobriety, let it be observed, that
+a painter must not only be of necessity an imitator of the works of
+nature, which alone is sufficient to dispel this phantom of inspiration,
+but he must be as necessarily an imitator of the works of other painters.
+This appears more humiliating, but it is equally true; and no man can be
+an artist, whatever he may suppose, upon any other terms.
+
+However, those who appear more moderate and reasonable allow that study
+is to begin by imitation, but that we should no longer use the thoughts
+of our predecessors when we are become able to think for ourselves.  They
+hold that imitation is as hurtful to the more advanced student as it was
+advantageous to the beginner.
+
+For my own part, I confess I am not only very much disposed to lay down
+the absolute necessity of imitation in the first stages of the art, but
+am of opinion that the study of other masters, which I here call
+imitation, may be extended throughout our whole life without any danger
+of the inconveniences with which it is charged, of enfeebling the mind,
+or preventing us from giving that original air which every work
+undoubtedly ought always to have.
+
+I am, on the contrary, persuaded that by imitation only, variety, and
+even originality of invention is produced.
+
+I will go further; even genius, at least what generally is so called, is
+the child of imitation.  But as this appears to be contrary to the
+general opinion, I must explain my position before I enforce it.
+
+Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are out
+of the reach of the rules of art--a power which no precepts can teach,
+and which no industry can acquire.
+
+This opinion of the impossibility of acquiring those beauties which stamp
+the work with the character of genius, supposes that it is something more
+fixed than in reality it is, and that we always do, and ever did agree,
+about what should be considered as a characteristic of genius.
+
+But the truth is that the degree of excellence which proclaims genius is
+different in different times and different places; and what shows it to
+be so is that mankind have often changed their opinion upon this matter.
+
+When the arts were in their infancy, the power of merely drawing the
+likeness of any object was considered as one of its greatest efforts.
+
+The common people, ignorant of the principles of art, talk the same
+language even to this day.  But when it was found that every man could be
+taught to do this, and a great deal more, merely by the observance of
+certain precepts, the name of genius then shifted its application, and
+was given only to those who added the peculiar character of the object
+they represented; to those who had invention, expression, grace, or
+dignity; or, in short, such qualities or excellences the producing of
+which could not then be taught by any known and promulgated rules.
+
+We are very sure that the beauty of form, the expression of the passions,
+the art of composition, even the power of giving a general air of
+grandeur to your work, is at present very much under the dominion of
+rules.  These excellences were, heretofore, considered merely as the
+effects of genius; and justly, if genius is not taken for inspiration,
+but as the effect of close observation and experience.
+
+He who first made any of these observations and digested them, so as to
+form an invariable principle for himself to work by, had that merit; but
+probably no one went very far at once; and generally the first who gave
+the hint did not know how to pursue it steadily and methodically, at
+least not in the beginning.  He himself worked on it, and improved it;
+others worked more, and improved farther, until the secret was
+discovered, and the practice made as general as refined practice can be
+made.  How many more principles may be fixed and ascertained we cannot
+tell; but as criticism is likely to go hand in hand with the art which is
+its subject, we may venture to say that as that art shall advance, its
+powers will be still more and more fixed by rules.
+
+But by whatever strides criticism may gain ground, we need be under no
+apprehension that invention will ever be annihilated or subdued, or
+intellectual energy be brought entirely within the restraint of written
+law.  Genius will still have room enough to expatiate, and keep always
+the same distance from narrow comprehension and mechanical performance.
+
+What we now call genius begins, not where rules, abstractedly taken, end,
+but where known vulgar and trite rules have no longer any place.  It must
+of necessity be that even works of genius, as well as every other effect,
+as it must have its cause, must likewise have its rules; it cannot be by
+chance that excellences are produced with any constancy, or any
+certainty, for this is not the nature of chance, but the rules by which
+men of extraordinary parts, and such as are called men of genius work,
+are either such as they discover by their own peculiar observation, or of
+such a nice texture as not easily to admit handling or expressing in
+words, especially as artists are not very frequently skilful in that mode
+of communicating ideas.
+
+Unsubstantial, however, as these rules may seem, and difficult as it may
+be to convey them in writing, they are still seen and felt in the mind of
+the artist, and he works from them with as much certainty as if they were
+embodied, as I may say, upon paper.  It is true these refined principles
+cannot be always made palpable, like the more gross rules of art; yet it
+does not follow but that the mind may be put in such a train that it
+shall perceive, by a kind of scientific sense, that propriety which
+words, particularly words of unpractised writers such as we are, can but
+very feebly suggest.
+
+Invention is one of the great marks of genius, but if we consult
+experience, we shall find that it is by being conversant with the
+inventions of others that we learn to invent, as by reading the thoughts
+of others we learn to think.
+
+Whoever has so far formed his taste as to be able to relish and feel the
+beauties of the great masters has gone a great way in his study; for,
+merely from a consciousness of this relish of the right, the mind swells
+with an inward pride, and is almost as powerfully affected as if it had
+itself produced what it admires.  Our hearts frequently warmed in this
+manner by the contact of those whom we wish to resemble, will undoubtedly
+catch something of their way of thinking, and we shall receive in our own
+bosoms some radiation at least of their fire and splendour.  That
+disposition, which is so strong in children, still continues with us, of
+catching involuntarily the general air and manner of those with whom we
+are most conversant; with this difference only, that a young mind is
+naturally pliable and imitative, but in a more advanced state it grows
+rigid, and must be warmed and softened before it will receive a deep
+impression.
+
+From these considerations, which a little of your reflection will carry a
+great way further, it appears of what great consequence it is that our
+minds should be habituated to the contemplation of excellence, and that,
+far from being contented to make such habits the discipline of our youth
+only, we should, to the last moment of our lives, continue a settled
+intercourse with all the true examples of grandeur.  Their inventions are
+not only the food of our infancy, but the substance which supplies the
+fullest maturity of our vigour.
+
+The mind is but a barren soil; is a soil soon exhausted, and will produce
+no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilised and enriched
+with foreign matter.
+
+When we have had continually before us the great works of art to
+impregnate our minds with kindred ideas, we are then, and not till then,
+fit to produce something, of the same species.  We behold all about us
+with the eyes of these penetrating observers, and our minds, accustomed
+to think the thoughts of the noblest and brightest intellects, are
+prepared for the discovery and selection of all that is great and noble
+in nature.  The greatest natural genius cannot subsist on its own stock:
+he who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own will be soon
+reduced, from mere barrenness, to the poorest of all imitations; he will
+be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often
+repeated.  When we know the subject designed by such men, it will never
+be difficult to guess what kind of work is to be produced.
+
+It is vain for painters or poets to endeavour to invent without materials
+on which the mind may work, and from which invention must originate.
+Nothing can come of nothing.
+
+Homer is supposed to be possessed of all the learning of his time.  And
+we are certain that Michael Angelo and Raffaelle were equally possessed
+of all knowledge in the art which was discoverable in the works of their
+predecessors.
+
+A mind enriched by an assemblage of all the treasures of ancient and
+modern art will be more elevated and fruitful in resources in proportion
+to the number of ideas which have been carefully collected and thoroughly
+digested.  There can be no doubt that he who has the most materials has
+the greatest means of invention; and if he has not the power of using
+them, it must proceed from a feebleness of intellect or from the confused
+manner in which those collections have been laid up in his mind.
+
+The addition of other men's judgment is so far from weakening, as is the
+opinion of many, our own, that it will fashion and consolidate those
+ideas of excellence which lay in their birth feeble, ill-shaped, and
+confused, but which are finished and put in order by the authority and
+practice of those whose works may be said to have been consecrated by
+having stood the test of ages.
+
+The mind, or genius, has been compared to a spark of fire which is
+smothered by a heap of fuel and prevented from blazing into a flame.  This
+simile, which is made use of by the younger Pliny, may be easily mistaken
+for argument or proof.
+
+There is no danger of the mind's being over-burdened with knowledge, or
+the genius extinguished by any addition of images; on the contrary, these
+acquisitions may as well, perhaps better, be compared, if comparisons
+signified anything in reasoning, to the supply of living embers, which
+will contribute to strengthen the spark that without the association of
+more would have died away.
+
+The truth is, he whose feebleness is such as to make other men's thoughts
+an incumbrance to him can have no very great strength of mind or genius
+of his own to be destroyed, so that not much harm will be done at worst.
+
+We may oppose to Pliny the greater authority of Cicero, who is
+continually enforcing the necessity of this method of study.  In his
+dialogue on Oratory he makes Crassus say, that one of the first and most
+important precepts is to choose a proper model for our imitation.  _Hoc
+fit primum in preceptis meis ut demonstremus quem imitemur_.
+
+When I speak of the habitual imitation and continued study of masters, it
+is not to be understood that I advise any endeavour to copy the exact
+peculiar colour and complexion of another man's mind; the success of such
+an attempt must always be like his who imitates exactly the air, manner,
+and gestures of him whom he admires.  His model may be excellent, but the
+copy will be ridiculous; this ridicule does not arise from his having
+imitated, but from his not having chosen the right mode of imitation.
+
+It is a necessary and warrantable pride to disdain to walk servilely
+behind any individual, however elevated his rank.  The true and liberal
+ground of imitation is an open field, where, though he who precedes has
+had the advantage of starting before you, yet it is enough to pursue his
+course; you need not tread in his footsteps, and you certainly have a
+right to outstrip him if you can.
+
+Nor, whilst I recommend studying the art from artists, can I be supposed
+to mean that nature is to be neglected?  I take this study in aid and not
+in exclusion of the other.  Nature is, and must be, the fountain which
+alone is inexhaustible; and from which all excellences must originally
+flow.
+
+The great use of studying our predecessors is to open the mind, to
+shorten our labour, and to give us the result of the selection made by
+those great minds of what is grand or beautiful in nature: her rich
+stores are all spread out before us; but it is an art, and no easy art,
+to know how or what to choose, and how to attain and secure the object of
+our choice.
+
+Thus the highest beauty of form must be taken from nature; but it is an
+art of long deduction and great experience to know how to find it.
+
+We must not content ourselves with merely admiring and relishing; we must
+enter into the principles on which the work is wrought; these do not swim
+on the superficies, and consequently are not open to superficial
+observers.
+
+Art in its perfection is not ostentatious; it lies hid, and works its
+effect itself unseen.  It is the proper study and labour of an artist to
+uncover and find out the latent cause of conspicuous beauties, and from
+thence form principles for his own conduct; such an examination is a
+continual exertion of the mind, as great, perhaps, as that of the artist
+whose works he is thus studying.
+
+The sagacious imitator not only remarks what distinguishes the different
+manner or genius of each master; he enters into the contrivance in the
+composition, how the masses of lights are disposed, the means by which
+the effect is produced, how artfully some parts are lost in the ground,
+others boldly relieved, and how all these are mutually altered and
+interchanged according to the reason and scheme of the work.  He admires
+not the harmony of colouring alone, but he examines by what artifice one
+colour is a foil to its neighbour.  He looks close into the tints, of
+what colours they are composed, till he has formed clear and distinct
+ideas, and has learnt to see in what harmony and good colouring consists.
+What is learnt in this manner from the works of others becomes really our
+own, sinks deep, and is never forgotten; nay, it is by seizing on this
+clue that we proceed forward, and get further and further in enlarging
+the principle and improving the practice.
+
+There can be no doubt but the art is better learnt from the works
+themselves than from the precepts which are formed upon these works; but
+if it is difficult to choose proper models for imitation, it requires no
+less circumspection to separate and distinguish what in those models we
+ought to imitate.
+
+I cannot avoid mentioning here, though it is not my intention at present
+to enter into the art and method of study, an error which students are
+too apt to fall into.
+
+He that is forming himself must look with great caution and wariness on
+those peculiarities, or prominent parts, which at first force themselves
+upon view, and are the marks, or what is commonly called the manner, by
+which that individual artist is distinguished.
+
+Peculiar marks I hold to be generally, if not always, defects, however
+difficult it may be, wholly to escape them.
+
+Peculiarities in the works of art are like those in the human figure; it
+is by them that we are cognisable and distinguished one from another, but
+they are always so many blemishes, which, however, both in the one case
+and in the other, cease to appear deformities to those who have them
+continually before their eyes.  In the works of art, even the most
+enlightened mind, when warmed by beauties of the highest kind, will by
+degrees find a repugnance within him to acknowledge any defects; nay, his
+enthusiasm will carry him so far as to transform them into beauties and
+objects of imitation.
+
+It must be acknowledged that a peculiarity of style, either from its
+novelty, or by seeming to proceed from a peculiar turn of mind, often
+escapes blame; on the contrary, it is sometimes striking and pleasing;
+but this it is vain labour to endeavour to imitate, because novelty and
+peculiarity being its only merit, when it ceases to be new, it ceases to
+have value.
+
+A manner, therefore, being a defect, and every painter, however
+excellent, having a manner, it seems to follow that all kinds of faults,
+as well as beauties, may be learned under the sanction of the greatest
+authorities.
+
+Even the great name of Michael Angelo may be used to keep in countenance
+a deficiency, or rather neglect of colouring, and every other ornamental
+part of the art.
+
+If the young student is dry and hard, Poussin is the same.  If his work
+has a careless and unfinished air, he has most of the Venetian School to
+support him.  If he makes no selection of objects, but takes individual
+nature just as he finds it, he is like Rembrandt.  If he is incorrect in
+the proportions of his figures, Correggio was likewise incorrect.  If his
+colours are not blended and united, Rubens was equally crude.
+
+In short, there is no defect but may be excused, if it is a sufficient
+excuse that it can be imputed to considerable artists; but it must be
+remembered that it was not by these defects they acquired their
+reputation: they have a right to our pardon, but not to our admiration.
+
+However, to imitate peculiarities or mistake defects for beauties that
+man will be most liable who confines his imitation to one favourite
+master; and, even though he chooses the best, and is capable of
+distinguishing the real excellences of his model, it is not by such
+narrow practice that a genius or mastery in the art is acquired.  A man
+is as little likely to form a true idea of the perfection of the art by
+studying a single artist as he would be of producing a perfectly
+beautiful figure by an exact imitation of any individual living model.
+
+And as the painter, by bringing together in one piece those beauties
+which are dispersed amongst a great variety of individuals, produces a
+figure more beautiful than can be found in nature, so that artist who can
+unite in himself the excellences of the various painters, will approach
+nearer to perfection than any one of his masters.
+
+He who confines himself to the imitation of an individual, as he never
+proposes to surpass, so he is not likely to equal, the object of
+imitation.  He professes only to follow, and he that follows must
+necessarily be behind.
+
+We should imitate the conduct of the great artists in the course of their
+studies, as well as the works which they produced, when they were
+perfectly formed.  Raffaelle began by imitating implicitly the manner of
+Pietro Perugino, under whom he studied; so his first works are scarce to
+be distinguished from his master's; but soon forming higher and more
+extensive views, he imitated the grand outline of Michael Angelo.  He
+learnt the manner of using colours from the works of Leonardo da Vinci
+and Fratre Bartolomeo: to all this he added the contemplation of all the
+remains of antiquity that were within his reach, and employed others to
+draw for him what was in Greece and distant places.  And it is from his
+having taken so many models that he became himself a model for all
+succeeding painters, always imitating, and always original.
+
+If your ambition therefore be to equal Raffaelle, you must do as
+Raffaelle did; take many models, and not take even him for your guide
+alone to the exclusion of others.  And yet the number is infinite of
+those who seem, if one may judge by their style, to have seen no other
+works but those of their master, or of some favourite whose manner is
+their first wish and their last.
+
+I will mention a few that occur to me of this narrow, confined,
+illiberal, unscientific, and servile kind of imitators.  Guido was thus
+meanly copied by Elizabetta Sirani, and Simone Cantarini; Poussin, by
+Verdier and Cheron; Parmigiano, by Jeronimo Mazzuoli; Paolo Veronese and
+Iacomo Bassan had for their imitators their brothers and sons; Pietro de
+Cortona was followed by Ciro Ferri and Romanelli; Rubens, by Jacques
+Jordans and Diepenbeck; Guercino, by his own family, the Gennari; Carlo
+Marratti was imitated by Giuseppe Chiari and Pietro da Pietri; and
+Rembrandt, by Bramer, Eckhout, and Flink.  All these, to whom may be
+added a much longer list of painters, whose works among the ignorant pass
+for those of their masters, are justly to be censured for barrenness and
+servility.
+
+To oppose to this list a few that have adopted a more liberal style of
+imitation: Pelegrino Tibaldi, Rosso, and Primaticio did not coldly
+imitate, but caught something of the fire that animates the works of
+Michael Angelo.  The Carraches formed their style from Pelegrino Tibaldi,
+Correggio, and the Venetian School.  Domenichino, Guido, Lanfranco,
+Albano, Guercino, Cavidone, Schidone, Tiarini, though it is sufficiently
+apparent that they came from the School of the Carraches, have yet the
+appearance of men who extended their views beyond the model that lay
+before them, and have shown that they had opinions of their own, and
+thought for themselves, after they had made themselves masters of the
+general principles of their schools.
+
+Le Seure's first manner resembles very much that of his master Vovet: but
+as he soon excelled him, so he differed from him in every part of the
+art.  Carlo Marratti succeeded better than those I have first named, and
+I think owes his superiority to the extension of his views; besides his
+master Andrea Sacchi, he imitated Raffaelle, Guido, and the Carraches.  It
+is true, there is nothing very captivating in Carlo Marratti; but this
+proceeded from wants which cannot be completely supplied; that is, want
+of strength of parts.  In this, certainly men are not equal, and a man
+can bring home wares only in proportion to the capital with which he goes
+to market.  Carlo, by diligence, made the most of what he had; but there
+was undoubtedly a heaviness about him, which extended itself, uniformly
+to his invention, expression, his drawing, colouring, and the general
+effect of his pictures.  The truth is, he never equalled any of his
+patterns in any one thing, and he added little of his own.
+
+But we must not rest contented, even in this general study of the
+moderns; we must trace back the art to its fountain head, to that source
+from whence they drew their principal excellences, the monuments of pure
+antiquity.
+
+All the inventions and thoughts of the ancients, whether conveyed to us
+in statues, bas-reliefs, intaglios, cameos, or coins, are to be sought
+after and carefully studied: The genius that hovers over these venerable
+relics may be called the father of modern art.
+
+From the remains of the works of the ancients the modern arts were
+revived, and it is by their means that they must be restored a second
+time.  However it may mortify our vanity, we must be forced to allow them
+our masters; and we may venture to prophecy, that when they shall cease
+to be studied, arts will no longer flourish, and we shall again relapse
+into barbarism.
+
+The fire of the artist's own genius operating upon these materials which
+have been thus diligently collected, will enable him to make new
+combinations, perhaps, superior to what had ever before been in the
+possession of the art.  As in the mixture of the variety of metals, which
+are said to have been melted and run together at the burning of Corinth,
+a new and till then unknown metal was produced equal in value to any of
+those that had contributed to its composition.  And though a curious
+refiner may come with his crucibles, analyse and separate its various
+component parts, yet Corinthian brass would still hold its rank amongst
+the most beautiful and valuable of metals.
+
+We have hitherto considered the advantages of imitation as it tends to
+form the taste, and as a practice by which a spark of that genius may be
+caught which illumines these noble works, that ought always to be present
+to our thoughts.
+
+We come now to speak of another kind of imitation; the borrowing a
+particular thought, an action, attitude, or figure, and transplanting it
+into your own work: this will either come under the charge of plagiarism,
+or be warrantable, and deserve commendation, according to the address
+with which it is performed.  There is some difference likewise whether it
+is upon the ancients or the moderns that these depredations are made.  It
+is generally allowed that no man need be ashamed of copying the ancients:
+their works are considered as a magazine of common property, always open
+to the public, whence every man has a right to what materials he pleases;
+and if he has the art of using them, they are supposed to become to all
+intents and purposes his own property.
+
+The collection which Raffaelle made of the thoughts of the ancients with
+so much trouble, is a proof of his opinion on this subject.  Such
+collections may be made with much more ease, by means of an art scarce
+known in his time; I mean that of engraving, by which, at an easy rate,
+every man may now avail himself of the inventions of antiquity.
+
+It must be acknowledged that the works of the moderns are more the
+property of their authors; he who borrows an idea from an artist, or
+perhaps from a modern, not his contemporary, and so accommodates it to
+his own work that it makes a part of it, with no seam or joining
+appearing, can hardly be charged with plagiarism; poets practise this
+kind of borrowing without reserve.  But an artist should not be contented
+with this only; he should enter into a competition with his original, and
+endeavour to improve what he is appropriating to his own work.  Such
+imitation is so far from having anything in it of the servility of
+plagiarism, that it is a perpetual exercise of the mind, a continual
+invention.
+
+Borrowing or stealing with such art and caution will have a right to the
+same lenity as was used by the Lacedemonians; who did not punish theft,
+but the want of artifice to conceal it.
+
+In order to encourage you to imitation, to the utmost extent, let me add,
+that very finished artists in the inferior branches of the art will
+contribute to furnish the mind and give hints of which a skilful painter,
+who is sensible of what he wants, and is in no danger of being infected
+by the contact of vicious models, will know how to avail himself.  He
+will pick up from dunghills what by a nice chemistry, passing through his
+own mind, shall be converted into pure gold; and, under the rudeness of
+Gothic essays, he will find original, rational, and even sublime
+inventions.
+
+In the luxuriant style of Paul Veronese, in the capricious compositions
+of Tintoret, he will find something that will assist his invention, and
+give points, from which his own imagination shall rise and take flight,
+when the subject which he treats will, with propriety, admit of splendid
+effects.
+
+In every school, whether Venetian, French, or Dutch, he will find either
+ingenious compositions, extraordinary effects, some peculiar expressions,
+or some mechanical excellence, well worthy his attention and, in some
+measure, of his imitation; even in the lower class of the French
+painters, great beauties are often found united with great defects.
+
+Though Coypel wanted a simplicity of taste, and mistook a presumptuous
+and assuming air for what is grand and majestic; yet he frequently has
+good sense and judgment in his manner of telling his stories, great skill
+in his compositions, and is not without a considerable power of
+expressing the passions, The modern affectation of grace in his works, as
+well as in those of Bouche and Watteau, may be said to be separated by a
+very thin partition from the more simple and pure grace of Correggio and
+Parmigiano.
+
+Amongst the Dutch painters, the correct, firm, and determined pencil,
+which was employed by Bamboccio and Jan Miel on vulgar and mean subjects,
+might without any change be employed on the highest, to which, indeed, it
+seems more properly to belong.  The greatest style, if that style is
+confined to small figures such as Poussin generally painted, would
+receive an additional grace by the elegance and precision of pencil so
+admirable in the works of Teniers.
+
+Though this school more particularly excelled in the mechanism of
+painting, yet there are many who have shown great abilities in expressing
+what must be ranked above mechanical excellences.
+
+In the works of Frank Hals the portrait painter may observe the
+composition of a face, the features well put together as the painters
+express it, from whence proceeds that strong marked character of
+individual nature which is so remarkable in his portraits, and is not to
+be found in an equal degree in any other painter.  If he had joined to
+this most difficult part of the art a patience in finishing what he had
+so correctly planned, he might justly have claimed the place which
+Vandyke, all things considered, so justly holds as the first of portrait
+painters.
+
+Others of the same school have shown great power in expressing the
+character and passions of those vulgar people which are the subjects of
+their study and attention.  Amongst those, Jean Stein seems to be one of
+the most diligent and accurate observers of what passed in those scenes
+which he frequented, and which were to him an academy.  I can easily
+imagine that if this extraordinary man had had the good fortune to have
+been born in Italy instead of Holland, had he lived in Rome instead of
+Leyden, and had been blessed with Michael Angelo and Raffaelle for his
+masters instead of Brower and Van Gowen, that the same sagacity and
+penetration which distinguished so accurately the different characters
+and expression in his vulgar figures, would, when exerted in the
+selection and imitation of what was great and elevated in nature, have
+been equally successful, and his name would have been now ranged with the
+great pillars and supporters of our art.
+
+Men who, although thus bound down by the almost invincible powers of
+early habits, have still exerted extraordinary abilities within their
+narrow and confined circle, and have, from the natural vigour of their
+mind, given such an interesting expression, such force and energy to
+their works, though they cannot be recommended to be exactly imitated,
+may yet invite an artist to endeavour to transfer, by a kind of parody,
+those excellences to his own works.  Whoever has acquired the power of
+making this use of the Flemish, Venetian, and French schools is a real
+genius, and has sources of knowledge open to him which were wanting to
+the great artists who lived in the great age of painting.
+
+To find excellences however dispersed, to discover beauties however
+concealed by the multitude of defects with which they are surrounded, can
+be the work only of him who, having a mind always alive to his art, has
+extended his views to all ages and to all schools, and has acquired from
+that comprehensive mass which he has thus gathered to himself, a well
+digested and perfect idea of his art, to which everything is referred.
+Like a sovereign judge and arbiter of art, he is possessed of that
+presiding power which separates and attracts every excellence from every
+school, selects both from what is great and what is little, brings home
+knowledge from the east and from the west, making the universe tributary
+towards furnishing his mind and enriching his works with originality and
+variety of inventions.
+
+Thus I have ventured to give my opinion of what appears to me the true
+and only method by which an artist makes himself master of his
+profession, which I hold ought to be one continued course of imitation,
+that is not to cease but with our lives.
+
+Those who, either from their own engagements and hurry of business, or
+from indolence, or from conceit and vanity, have neglected looking out of
+themselves, as far as my experience and observation reaches, have from
+that time not only ceased to advance and improve in their performance,
+but have gone backward.  They may be compared to men who have lived upon
+their principal till they are reduced to beggary and left without
+resources.
+
+I can recommend nothing better, therefore, than that you endeavour to
+infuse into your works what you learn from the contemplation of the works
+of others.  To recommend this has the appearance of needless and
+superfluous advice, but it has fallen within my own knowledge that
+artists, though they are not wanting in a sincere love for their art,
+though they have great pleasure in seeing good pictures, and are well
+skilled to distinguish what is excellent or defective in them, yet go on
+in their own manner, without any endeavour to give a little of those
+beauties which they admire in others, to their own works.  It is
+difficult to conceive how the present Italian painters, who live in the
+midst of the treasures of art, should be contented with their own style.
+They proceed in their common-place inventions, and never think it worth
+while to visit the works of those great artists with which they are
+surrounded.
+
+I remember several years ago to have conversed at Rome with an artist of
+great fame throughout Europe; he was not without a considerable degree of
+abilities, but those abilities were by no means equal to his own opinion
+of them.  From the reputation he had acquired he too fondly concluded
+that he stood in the same rank, when compared to his predecessors, as he
+held with regard to his miserable contemporary rivals.
+
+In conversation about some particulars of the works of Raffaelle, he
+seemed to have, or to affect to have, a very obscure memory of them.  He
+told me that he had not set his foot in the Vatican for fifteen years
+together; that indeed he had been in treaty to copy a capital picture of
+Raffaelle, but that the business had gone off; however, if the agreement
+had held, his copy would have greatly exceeded the original.  The merit
+of this artist, however great we may suppose it, I am sure would have
+been far greater, and his presumption would have been far less if he had
+visited the Vatican, as in reason he ought to have done, once at least
+every month of his life.
+
+I address myself, gentlemen, to you who have made some progress in the
+art, and are to be for the future under the guidance of your own judgment
+and discretion.
+
+I consider you as arrived to that period when you have a right to think
+for yourselves, and to presume that every man is fallible; to study the
+masters with a suspicion that great men are not always exempt from great
+faults; to criticise, compare, and rank their works in your own
+estimation, as they approach to or recede from that standard of
+perfection which you have formed in your own mind, but which those
+masters themselves, it must be remembered, have taught you to make, and
+which you will cease to make with correctness when you cease to study
+them.  It is their excellences which have taught you their defects.
+
+I would wish you to forget where you are, and who it is that speaks to
+you.  I only direct you to higher models and better advisers.  We can
+teach you here but very little; you are henceforth to be your own
+teachers.  Do this justice, however, to the English Academy, to bear in
+mind, that in this place you contracted no narrow habits, no false ideas,
+nothing that could lead you to the imitation of any living master, who
+may be the fashionable darling of the day.  As you have not been taught
+to flatter us, do not learn to flatter yourselves.  We have endeavoured
+to lead you to the admiration of nothing but what is truly admirable.  If
+you choose inferior patterns, or if you make your own _former_ works,
+your patterns for your _latter_, it is your own fault.
+
+The purpose of this discourse, and, indeed, of most of my others, is to
+caution you against that false opinion, but too prevalent amongst
+artists, of the imaginary power of native genius, and its sufficiency in
+great works.  This opinion, according to the temper of mind it meets
+with, almost always produces, either a vain confidence, or a sluggish
+despair, both equally fatal to all proficiency.
+
+Study, therefore, the great works of the great masters for ever.  Study
+as nearly as you can, in the order, in the manner, on the principles, on
+which they studied.  Study nature attentively, but always with those
+masters in your company; consider them as models which you are to
+imitate, and at the same time as rivals which you are to combat.
+
+
+
+A DISCOURSE
+Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution of the
+Prizes, December 10th, 1776, by the President.
+
+
+Gentlemen,--It has been my uniform endeavour, since I first addressed you
+from this place, to impress you strongly with one ruling idea.  I wished
+you to be persuaded, that success in your art depends almost entirely on
+your own industry; but the industry which I principally recommended, is
+not the industry of the _hands_, but of the _mind_.
+
+As our art is not a divine gift, so neither is it a mechanical trade.  Its
+foundations are laid in solid science.  And practice, though essential to
+perfection, can never attain that to which it aims, unless it works under
+the direction of principle.
+
+Some writers upon art carry this point too far, and suppose that such a
+body of universal and profound learning is requisite, that the very
+enumeration of its kind is enough to frighten a beginner.  Vitruvius,
+after going through the many accomplishments of nature, and the many
+acquirements of learning, necessary to an architect, proceeds with great
+gravity to assert that he ought to be well skilled in the civil law, that
+he may not be cheated in the title of the ground he builds on.
+
+But without such exaggeration, we may go so far as to assert, that a
+painter stands in need of more knowledge than is to be picked off his
+pallet, or collected by looking on his model, whether it be in life or in
+picture.  He can never be a great artist who is grossly illiterate.
+
+Every man whose business is description ought to be tolerably conversant
+with the poets in some language or other, that he may imbibe a poetical
+spirit and enlarge his stock of ideas.  He ought to acquire a habit of
+comparing and divesting his notions.  He ought not to be wholly
+unacquainted with that part of philosophy which gives him an insight into
+human nature, and relates to the manners, characters, passions, and
+affections.  He ought to know something concerning the mind, as well as a
+great deal concerning the body of man.
+
+For this purpose, it is not necessary that he should go into such a
+compass of reading, as must, by distracting his attention, disqualify him
+for the practical part of his profession, and make him sink the performer
+in the critic.  Reading, if it can be made the favourite recreation of
+his leisure hours, will improve and enlarge his mind without retarding
+his actual industry.
+
+What such partial and desultory reading cannot afford, may be supplied by
+the conversation of learned and ingenious men, which is the best of all
+substitutes for those who have not the means or opportunities of deep
+study.  There are many such men in this age; and they will be pleased
+with communicating their ideas to artists, when they see them curious and
+docile, if they are treated with that respect and deference which is so
+justly their due.  Into such society, young artists, if they make it the
+point of their ambition, will by degrees be admitted.  There, without
+formal teaching, they will insensibly come to feel and reason like those
+they live with, and find a rational and systematic taste imperceptibly
+formed in their minds, which they will know how to reduce to a standard,
+by applying general truth to their own purposes, better perhaps than
+those to whom they owed the original sentiment.
+
+Of these studies and this conversation, the desired and legitimate
+offspring is a power of distinguishing right from wrong, which power
+applied to works of art is denominated taste.  Let me then, without
+further introduction, enter upon an examination whether taste be so far
+beyond our reach as to be unattainable by care, or be so very vague and
+capricious that no care ought to be employed about it.
+
+It has been the fate of arts to be enveloped in mysterious and
+incomprehensible language, as if it was thought necessary that even the
+terms should correspond to the idea entertained of the instability and
+uncertainty of the rules which they expressed.
+
+To speak of genius and taste as any way connected with reason or common
+sense, would be, in the opinion of some towering talkers, to speak like a
+man who possessed neither, who had never felt that enthusiasm, or, to use
+their own inflated language, was never warmed by that Promethean fire,
+which animates the canvas and vivifies the marble.
+
+If, in order to be intelligible, I appear to degrade art by bringing her
+down from her visionary situation in the clouds, it is only to give her a
+more solid mansion upon the earth.  It is necessary that at some time or
+other we should see things as they really are, and not impose on
+ourselves by that false magnitude with which objects appear when viewed
+indistinctly as through a mist.
+
+We will allow a poet to express his meaning, when his meaning is not well
+known to himself, with a certain degree of obscurity, as it is one source
+of the sublime.  But when, in plain prose, we gravely talk of courting
+the muse in shady bowers, waiting the call and inspiration of genius,
+finding out where he inhabits, and where he is to be invoked with the
+greatest success; of attending to times and seasons when the imagination
+shoots with the greatest vigour, whether at the summer solstice or the
+equinox, sagaciously observing how much the wild freedom and liberty of
+imagination is cramped by attention to established rules, and how this
+same imagination begins to grow dim in advanced age, smothered and
+deadened by too much judgment.  When we talk such language, or entertain
+such sentiments as these, we generally rest contented with mere words, or
+at best entertain notions not only groundless, but pernicious.
+
+If all this means what it is very possible was originally intended only
+to be meant, that in order to cultivate an art, a man secludes himself
+from the commerce of the world, and retires into the country at
+particular seasons; or that at one time of the year his body is in better
+health, and consequently his mind fitter for the business of hard
+thinking than at another time; or that the mind may be fatigued and grow
+confused by long and unremitted application; this I can understand.  I
+can likewise believe that a man eminent when young for possessing
+poetical imagination, may, from having taken another road, so neglect its
+cultivation as to show less of its powers in his latter life.  But I am
+persuaded that scarce a poet is to be found, from Homer down to Dryden,
+who preserved a sound mind in a sound body, and continued practising his
+profession to the very last, whose later works are not as replete with
+the fire of imagination as those which were produced in his more youthful
+days.
+
+To understand literally these metaphors or ideas expressed in poetical
+language, seems to be equally absurd as to conclude that because painters
+sometimes represent poets writing from the dictates of a little winged
+boy or genius, that this same genius did really inform him in a whisper
+what he was to write, and that he is himself but a mere machine,
+unconscious of the operations of his own mind.
+
+Opinions generally received and floating in the world, whether true or
+false, we naturally adopt and make our own; they may be considered as a
+kind of inheritance to which we succeed and are tenants for life, and
+which we leave to our posterity very near in the condition in which we
+received it; not much being in any one man's power either to impair or
+improve it.
+
+The greatest part of these opinions, like current coin in its
+circulation, we are obliged to take without weighing or examining; but by
+this inevitable inattention, many adulterated pieces are received, which,
+when we seriously estimate our wealth, we must throw away.  So the
+collector of popular opinions, when he embodies his knowledge, and forms
+a system, must separate those which are true from those which are only
+plausible.  But it becomes more peculiarly a duty to the professors of
+art not to let any opinions relating to that art pass unexamined.  The
+caution and circumspection required in such examination we shall
+presently have an opportunity of explaining.
+
+Genius and taste, in their common acceptation, appear to be very nearly
+related; the difference lies only in this, that genius has superadded to
+it a habit or power of execution.  Or we may say, that taste, when this
+power is added, changes its name, and is called genius.  They both, in
+the popular opinion, pretend to an entire exemption from the restraint of
+rules.  It is supposed that their powers are intuitive; that under the
+name of genius great works are produced, and under the name of taste an
+exact judgment is given, without our knowing why, and without being under
+the least obligation to reason, precept, or experience.
+
+One can scarce state these opinions without exposing their absurdity, yet
+they are constantly in the mouths of men, and particularly of artists.
+They who have thought seriously on this subject, do not carry the point
+so far; yet I am persuaded, that even among those few who may be called
+thinkers, the prevalent opinion gives less than it ought to the powers of
+reason; and considers the principles of taste, which give all their
+authority to the rules of art, as more fluctuating, and as having less
+solid foundations than we shall find, upon examination, they really have.
+
+The common saying, that tastes are not to be disputed, owes its
+influence, and its general reception, to the same error which leads us to
+imagine it of too high original to submit to the authority of an earthly
+tribunal.  It will likewise correspond with the notions of those who
+consider it as a mere phantom of the imagination, so devoid of substance
+as to elude all criticism.
+
+We often appear to differ in sentiments from each other, merely from the
+inaccuracy of terms, as we are not obliged to speak always with critical
+exactness.  Something of this too may arise from want of words in the
+language to express the more nice discriminations which a deep
+investigation discovers.  A great deal, however, of this difference
+vanishes when each opinion is tolerably explained and understood by
+constancy and precision in the use of terms.
+
+We apply the term taste to that act of the mind by which we like or
+dislike, whatever be the subject.  Our judgment upon an airy nothing, a
+fancy which has no foundation, is called by the same name which we give
+to our determination concerning those truths which refer to the most
+general and most unalterable principles of human nature, to works which
+are only to be produced by the greatest efforts of the human
+understanding.  However inconvenient this may be, we are obliged to take
+words as we find them; all we can do is to distinguish the things to
+which they are applied.
+
+We may let pass those things which are at once subjects of taste and
+sense, and which having as much certainty as the senses themselves, give
+no occasion to inquiry or dispute.  The natural appetite or taste of the
+human mind is for truth; whether that truth results from the real
+agreement or equality of original ideas among themselves; from the
+agreement of the representation of any object with the thing represented;
+or from the correspondence of the several parts of any arrangement with
+each other.  It is the very same taste which relishes a demonstration in
+geometry, that is pleased with the resemblance of a picture to an
+original, and touched with the harmony of music.
+
+All these have unalterable and fixed foundations in nature, and are
+therefore equally investigated by reason, and known by study; some with
+more, some with less clearness, but all exactly in the same way.  A
+picture that is unlike, is false.  Disproportionate ordinance of parts is
+not right because it cannot be true until it ceases to be a contradiction
+to assert that the parts have no relation to the whole.  Colouring is
+true where it is naturally adapted to the eye, from brightness, from
+softness, from harmony, from resemblance; because these agree with their
+object, nature, and therefore are true: as true as mathematical
+demonstration; but known to be true only to those who study these things.
+
+But besides real, there is also apparent truth, or opinion, or prejudice.
+With regard to real truth, when it is known, the taste which conforms to
+it is, and must be, uniform.  With regard to the second sort of truth,
+which may be called truth upon sufferance, or truth by courtesy, it is
+not fixed, but variable.  However, whilst these opinions and prejudices
+on which it is founded continue, they operate as truth; and the art,
+whose office it is to please the mind, as well as instruct it, must
+direct itself according to opinion, or it will not attain its end.
+
+In proportion as these prejudices are known to be generally diffused, or
+long received, the taste which conforms to them approaches nearer to
+certainty, and to a sort of resemblance to real science, even where
+opinions are found to be no better than prejudices.  And since they
+deserve, on account of their duration and extent, to be considered as
+really true, they become capable of no small decree of stability and
+determination by their permanent and uniform nature.
+
+As these prejudices become more narrow, more local, more transitory, this
+secondary taste becomes more and more fantastical; recedes from real
+science; is less to be approved by reason, and less followed in practice;
+though in no case perhaps to be wholly neglected, where it does not
+stand, as it sometimes does, in direct defiance of the most respectable
+opinions received amongst mankind.
+
+Having laid down these positions, I shall proceed with less method,
+because less will serve, to explain and apply them.
+
+We will take it for granted that reason is something invariable and fixed
+in the nature of things; and without endeavouring to go back to an
+account of first principles, which for ever will elude our search, we
+will conclude that whatever goes under the name of taste, which we can
+fairly bring under the dominion of reason, must be considered as equally
+exempt from change.  If therefore, in the course of this inquiry, we can
+show that there are rules for the conduct of the artist which are fixed
+and invariable, it implies, of course, that the art of the connoisseur,
+or, in other words, taste, has likewise invariable principles.
+
+Of the judgment which we make on the works of art, and the preference
+that we give to one class of art over another, if a reason be demanded,
+the question is perhaps evaded by answering, "I judge from my taste"; but
+it does not follow that a better answer cannot be given, though for
+common gazers this may be sufficient.  Every man is not obliged to
+investigate the causes of his approbation or dislike.
+
+The arts would lie open for ever to caprice and casualty, if those who
+are to judge of their excellences had no settled principles by which they
+are to regulate their decisions, and the merit or defect of performances
+were to be determined by unguided fancy.  And indeed we may venture to
+assert that whatever speculative knowledge is necessary to the artist, is
+equally and indispensably necessary to the connoisseur.
+
+The first idea that occurs in the consideration of what is fixed in art,
+or in taste, is that presiding principle of which I have so frequently
+spoken in former discourses, the general idea of nature.  The beginning,
+the middle, and the end of everything that is valuable in taste, is
+comprised in the knowledge of what is truly nature; for whatever ideas
+are not conformable to those of nature, or universal opinion, must be
+considered as more or less capricious.
+
+The idea of nature comprehending not only the forms which nature
+produces, but also the nature and internal fabric and organisation, as I
+may call it, of the human mind and imagination: general ideas, beauty, or
+nature, are but different ways of expressing the same thing, whether we
+apply these terms to statues, poetry, or picture.  Deformity is not
+nature, but an accidental deviation from her accustomed practice.  This
+general idea therefore ought to be called nature, and nothing else,
+correctly speaking, has a right to that name.  But we are so far from
+speaking, in common conversation, with any such accuracy, that, on the
+contrary, when we criticise Rembrandt and other Dutch painters, who
+introduced into their historical pictures exact representations of
+individual objects with all their imperfections, we say, though it is not
+in a good taste, yet it is nature.
+
+This misapplication of terms must be very often perplexing to the young
+student.  Is not, he may say, art an imitation of nature?  Must he not,
+therefore, who imitates her with the greatest fidelity be the best
+artist?  By this mode of reasoning Rembrandt has a higher place than
+Raffaelle.  But a very little reflection will serve to show us that these
+particularities cannot be nature: for how can that be the nature of man,
+in which no two individuals are the same?
+
+It plainly appears that as a work is conducted under the influence of
+general ideas or partial it is principally to be considered as the effect
+of a good or a bad taste.
+
+As beauty therefore does not consist in taking what lies immediately
+before you, so neither, in our pursuit of taste, are those opinions which
+we first received and adopted the best choice, or the most natural to the
+mind and imagination.
+
+In the infancy of our knowledge we seize with greediness the good that is
+within our reach; it is by after-consideration, and in consequence of
+discipline, that we refuse the present for a greater good at a distance.
+The nobility or elevation of all arts, like the excellence of virtue
+itself, consists in adopting this enlarged and comprehensive idea, and
+all criticism built upon the more confined view of what is natural, may
+properly be called shallow criticism, rather than false; its defect is
+that the truth is not sufficiently extensive.
+
+It has sometimes happened that some of the greatest men in our art have
+been betrayed into errors by this confined mode of reasoning.  Poussin,
+who, upon the whole, may be produced as an instance of attention to the
+most enlarged and extensive ideas of nature, from not having settled
+principles on this point, has in one instance at least, I think, deserted
+truth for prejudice.  He is said to have vindicated the conduct of Julio
+Romano, for his inattention to the masses of light and shade, or grouping
+the figures, in the battle of Constantine, as if designedly neglected,
+the better to correspond with the hurry and confusion of a battle.
+Poussin's own conduct in his representations of Bacchanalian triumphs and
+sacrifices, makes us more easily give credit to this report, since in
+such subjects, as well indeed as in many others, it was too much his own
+practice.  The best apology we can make for this conduct is what proceeds
+from the association of our ideas, the prejudice we have in favour of
+antiquity.  Poussin's works, as I have formerly observed, have very much
+the air of the ancient manner of painting, in which there are not the
+least traces to make us think that what we call the keeping, the
+composition of light and shade, or distribution of the work into masses,
+claimed any part of their attention.  But surely whatever apology we may
+find out for this neglect, it ought to be ranked among the defects of
+Poussin, as well as of the antique paintings; and the moderns have a
+right to that praise which is their due, for having given so pleasing an
+addition to the splendour of the art.
+
+Perhaps no apology ought to be received for offences committed against
+the vehicle (whether it be the organ of seeing or of hearing) by which
+our pleasures are conveyed to the mind.  We must take the same care that
+the eye be not perplexed and distracted by a confusion of equal parts, or
+equal lights, as of offending it by an unharmonious mixture of colours.
+We may venture to be more confident of the truth of this observation,
+since we find that Shakespeare, on a parallel occasion, has made Hamlet
+recommend to the players a precept of the same kind, never to offend the
+ear by harsh sounds:--"In the very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of
+your passions," says he, "you must beget a temperance that may give it
+smoothness."  And yet, at the same time, he very justly observes, "The
+end of playing, both at the first and now, is to hold, as it were, the
+mirror up to nature."  No one can deny but that violent passions will
+naturally emit harsh and disagreeable tones; yet this great poet and
+critic thought that this imitation of nature would cost too much, if
+purchased at the expense of disagreeable sensations, or, as he expresses
+it, of "splitting the ear."  The poet and actor, as well as the painter
+of genius who is well acquainted with all the variety and sources of
+pleasure in the mind and imagination, has little regard or attention to
+common nature, or creeping after common sense.  By overleaping those
+narrow bounds, he more effectually seizes the whole mind, and more
+powerfully accomplishes his purpose.  This success is ignorantly imagined
+to proceed from inattention to all rules, and in defiance of reason and
+judgment; whereas it is in truth acting according to the best rules, and
+the justest reason.
+
+He who thinks nature, in the narrow sense of the word, is alone to be
+followed, will produce but a scanty entertainment for the imagination:
+everything is to be done with which it is natural for the mind to be
+pleased, whether it proceeds from simplicity or variety, uniformity or
+irregularity: whether the scenes are familiar or exotic; rude and wild,
+or enriched and cultivated; for it is natural for the mind to be pleased
+with all these in their turn.  In short, whatever pleases has in it what
+is analogous to the mind, and is therefore, in the highest and best sense
+of the word, natural.
+
+It is this sense of nature or truth which ought more particularly to be
+cultivated by the professors of art; and it may be observed that many
+wise and learned men, who have accustomed their minds to admit nothing
+for truth but what can be proved by mathematical demonstration, have
+seldom any relish for those arts which address themselves to the fancy,
+the rectitude and truth of which is known by another kind of proof: and
+we may add that the acquisition of this knowledge requires as much
+circumspection and sagacity, as to attain those truths which are more
+open to demonstration.  Reason must ultimately determine our choice on
+every occasion; but this reason may still be exerted ineffectually by
+applying to taste principles which, though right as far as they go, yet
+do not reach the object.  No man, for instance, can deny that it seems at
+first view very reasonable, that a statue which is to carry down to
+posterity the resemblance of an individual should be dressed in the
+fashion of the times, in the dress which he himself wore: this would
+certainly be true if the dress were part of the man.  But after a time
+the dress is only an amusement for an antiquarian; and if it obstructs
+the general design of the piece, it is to be disregarded by the artist.
+Common sense must here give way to a higher sense.
+
+In the naked form, and in the disposition of the drapery, the difference
+between one artist and another is principally seen.  But if he is
+compelled to the modern dress, the naked form is entirely hid, and the
+drapery is already disposed by the skill of the tailor.  Were a Phidias
+to obey such absurd commands, he would please no more than an ordinary
+sculptor; since, in the inferior parts of every art, the learned and the
+ignorant are nearly upon a level.
+
+These were probably among the reasons that induced the sculptor of that
+wonderful figure of Laocoon to exhibit him naked, notwithstanding he was
+surprised in the act of sacrificing to Apollo, and consequently ought to
+be shown in his sacerdotal habits, if those greater reasons had not
+preponderated.  Art is not yet in so high estimation with us as to obtain
+so great a sacrifice as the ancients made, especially the Grecians, who
+suffered themselves to be represented naked, whether they were generals,
+lawgivers, or kings.
+
+Under this head of balancing and choosing the greater reason, or of two
+evils taking the least, we may consider the conduct of Rubens in the
+Luxembourg gallery, of mixing allegorical figures with representations of
+real personages, which, though acknowledged to be a fault, yet, if the
+artist considered himself as engaged to furnish this gallery with a rich
+and splendid ornament, this could not be done, at least in an equal
+degree, without peopling the air and water with these allegorical
+figures: he therefore accomplished that he purposes.  In this case all
+lesser considerations, which tend to obstruct the great end of the work,
+must yield and give way.
+
+If it is objected that Rubens judged ill at first in thinking it
+necessary to make his work so very ornamental, this brings the question
+upon new ground.  It was his peculiar style; he could paint in no other;
+and he was selected for that work, probably, because it was his style.
+Nobody will dispute but some of the best of the Roman or Bolognian
+schools would have produced a more learned and more noble work.
+
+This leads us to another important province of taste, of weighing the
+value of the different classes of the art, and of estimating them
+accordingly.
+
+All arts have means within them of applying themselves with success both
+to the intellectual and sensitive part of our natures.  It can be no
+dispute, supposing both these means put in practice with equal abilities,
+to which we ought to give the preference: to him who represents the
+heroic arts and more dignified passions of man, or to him who, by the
+help of meretricious ornaments, however elegant and graceful, captivates
+the sensuality, as it may be called, of our taste.  Thus the Roman and
+Bolognian schools are reasonably preferred to the Venetian, Flemish, or
+Dutch schools, as they address themselves to our best and noblest
+faculties.
+
+Well-turned periods in eloquence, or harmony of numbers in poetry, which
+are in those arts what colouring is in painting, however highly we may
+esteem them, can never be considered as of equal importance with the art
+of unfolding truths that are useful to mankind, and which make us better
+or wiser.  Nor can those works which remind us of the poverty and
+meanness of our nature, be considered as of equal rank with what excites
+ideas of grandeur, or raises and dignifies humanity; or, in the words of
+a late poet, which makes the beholder learn to venerate himself as man.
+
+It is reason and good sense therefore which ranks and estimates every
+art, and every part of that art, according to its importance, from the
+painter of animated down to inanimated nature.  We will not allow a man,
+who shall prefer the inferior style, to say it is his taste; taste here
+has nothing, or at least ought to have nothing to do with the question.
+He wants not taste, but sense, and soundness of judgment.
+
+Indeed, perfection in an inferior style may be reasonably preferred to
+mediocrity in the highest walks of art.  A landscape of Claude Lorraine
+may be preferred to a history of Luca Jordano; but hence appears the
+necessity of the connoisseur's knowing in what consists the excellence of
+each class, in order to judge how near it approaches to perfection.
+
+Even in works of the same kind, as in history painting, which is composed
+of various parts, excellence of an inferior species, carried to a very
+high degree, will make a work very valuable, and in some measure
+compensate for the absence of the higher kind of merits.  It is the duty
+of the connoisseur to know and esteem, as much as it may deserve, every
+part of painting; he will not then think even Bassano unworthy of his
+notice, who, though totally devoid of expression, sense, grace, or
+elegance, may be esteemed on account of his admirable taste of colours,
+which, in his best works, are little inferior to those of Titian.
+
+Since I have mentioned Bassano, we must do him likewise the justice to
+acknowledge that, though he did not aspire to the dignity of expressing
+the characters and passions of men, yet, with respect to the facility and
+truth in his manner of touching animals of all kinds, and giving them
+what painters call their character, few have ever excelled him.
+
+To Bassano we may add Paul Veronese and Tintoret, for their entire
+inattention to what is justly esteemed the most essential part of our
+art, the expression of the passions.  Notwithstanding these glaring
+deficiencies, we justly esteem their works; but it must be remembered
+that they do not please from those defects, but from their great
+excellences of another kind, and in spite of such transgressions.  These
+excellences, too, as far as they go, are founded in the truth of general
+nature.  They tell the truth, though not the whole truth.
+
+By these considerations, which can never be too frequently impressed, may
+be obviated two errors which I observed to have been, formerly at least,
+the most prevalent, and to be most injurious to artists: that of thinking
+taste and genius to have nothing to do with reason, and that of taking
+particular living objects for nature.
+
+I shall now say something on that part of taste which, as I have hinted
+to you before, does not belong so much to the external form of things,
+but is addressed to the mind, and depends on its original frame, or, to
+use the expression, the organisation of the soul; I mean the imagination
+and the passions.  The principles of these are as invariable as the
+former, and are to be known and reasoned upon in the same manner, by an
+appeal to common sense deciding upon the common feelings of mankind.  This
+sense, and these feelings, appear to me of equal authority, and equally
+conclusive.
+
+Now this appeal implies a general uniformity and agreement in the minds
+of men.  It would be else an idle and vain endeavour to establish rules
+of art; it would be pursuing a phantom to attempt to move affections with
+which we were entirely unacquainted.  We have no reason to suspect there
+is a greater difference between our minds than between our forms, of
+which, though there are no two alike, yet there is a general similitude
+that goes through the whole race of mankind; and those who have
+cultivated their taste can distinguish what is beautiful or deformed, or,
+in other words, what agrees with or what deviates from the general idea
+of nature, in one case as well as in the other.
+
+The internal fabric of our mind, as well as the external form of our
+bodies, being nearly uniform, it seems then to follow, of course, that as
+the imagination is incapable of producing anything originally of itself,
+and can only vary and combine these ideas with which it is furnished by
+means of the senses, there will be, of course, an agreement in the
+imaginations as in the senses of men.  There being this agreement, it
+follows that in all cases, in our lightest amusements as well as in our
+most serious actions and engagements of life, we must regulate our
+affections of every kind by that of others.  The well-disciplined mind
+acknowledges this authority, and submits its own opinion to the public
+voice.
+
+It is from knowing what are the general feelings and passions of mankind
+that we acquire a true idea of what imagination is; though it appears as
+if we had nothing to do but to consult our own particular sensations, and
+these were sufficient to ensure us from all error and mistake.
+
+A knowledge of the disposition and character of the human mind can be
+acquired only by experience: a great deal will be learned, I admit, by a
+habit of examining what passes in our bosoms, what are our own motives of
+action, and of what kind of sentiments we are conscious on any occasion.
+We may suppose a uniformity, and conclude that the same effect will be
+produced by the same cause in the minds of others.  This examination will
+contribute to suggest to us matters of inquiry; but we can never be sure
+that our own sensations are true and right till they are confirmed by
+more extensive observation.
+
+One man opposing another determines nothing but a general union of minds,
+like a general combination of the forces of all mankind, makes a strength
+that is irresistible.  In fact, as he who does not know himself does not
+know others, so it may be said with equal truth, that he who does not
+know others knows himself but very imperfectly.
+
+A man who thinks he is guarding himself against Prejudices by resisting
+the authority of others, leaves open every avenue to singularity, vanity,
+self-conceit, obstinacy, and many other vices, all tending to warp the
+judgment and prevent the natural operation of his faculties.
+
+This submission to others is a deference which we owe, and indeed are
+forced involuntarily to pay.
+
+In fact we are never satisfied with our opinions till they are ratified
+and confirmed by the suffrages of the rest of mankind.  We dispute and
+wrangle for ever; we endeavour to get men to come to us when we do not go
+to them.
+
+He therefore who is acquainted with the works which have pleased
+different ages and different countries, and has formed his opinion on
+them, has more materials and more means of knowing what is analogous to
+the mind of man than he who is conversant only with the works of his own
+age or country.  What has pleased, and continues to please, is likely to
+please again: hence are derived the rules of art, and on this immovable
+foundation they must ever stand.
+
+This search and study of the history of the mind ought not to be confined
+to one art only.  It is by the analogy that one art bears to another that
+many things are ascertained which either were but faintly seen, or,
+perhaps, would not have been discovered at all if the inventor had not
+received the first hints from the practices of a sister art on a similar
+occasion.  The frequent allusions which every man who treats of any art
+is obliged to draw from others in order to illustrate and confirm his
+principles, sufficiently show their near connection and inseparable
+relation.
+
+All arts having the same general end, which is to please, and addressing
+themselves to the same faculties through the medium of the senses, it
+follows that their rules and principles must have as great affinity as
+the different materials and the different organs or vehicles by which
+they pass to the mind will permit them to retain.
+
+We may therefore conclude that the real substance, as it may be called,
+of what goes under the name of taste, is fixed and established in the
+nature of things; that there are certain and regular causes by which the
+imagination and passions of men are affected; and that the knowledge of
+these causes is acquired by a laborious and diligent investigation of
+nature, and by the same slow progress as wisdom or knowledge of every
+kind, however instantaneous its operations may appear when thus acquired.
+
+It has been often observed that the good and virtuous man alone can
+acquire this true or just relish, even of works of art.  This opinion
+will not appear entirely without foundation when we consider that the
+same habit of mind which is acquired by our search after truth in the
+more serious duties of life, is only transferred to the pursuit of
+lighter amusements: the same disposition, the same desire to find
+something steady, substantial, and durable, on which the mind can lean,
+as it were, and rest with safety.  The subject only is changed.  We
+pursue the same method in our search after the idea of beauty and
+perfection in each; of virtue, by looking forwards beyond ourselves to
+society, and to the whole; of arts, by extending our views in the same
+manner to all ages and all times.
+
+Every art, like our own, has in its composition fluctuating as well as
+fixed principles.  It is an attentive inquiry into their difference that
+will enable us to determine how far we are influenced by custom and
+habit, and what is fixed in the nature of things.
+
+To distinguish how much has solid foundation, we may have recourse to the
+same proof by which some hold wit ought to be tried--whether it preserves
+itself when translated.  That wit is false which can subsist only in one
+language; and that picture which pleases only one age or one nation, owes
+its reception to some local or accidental association of ideas.
+
+We may apply this to every custom and habit of life.  Thus the general
+principles of urbanity, politeness, or civility, have been ever the same
+in all nations; but the mode in which they are dressed is continually
+varying.  The general idea of showing respect is by making yourself less:
+but the manner, whether by bowing the body, kneeling, prostration,
+pulling off the upper part of our dress, or taking away the lower, is a
+matter of habit.  It would be unjust to conclude that all ornaments,
+because they were at first arbitrarily contrived, are therefore
+undeserving of our attention; on the contrary, he who neglects the
+cultivation of those ornaments, acts contrarily to nature and reason.  As
+life would be imperfect without its highest ornaments, the arts, so these
+arts themselves would be imperfect without _their_ ornaments.
+
+Though we by no means ought to rank these with positive and substantial
+beauties, yet it must be allowed that a knowledge of both is essentially
+requisite towards forming a complete, whole, and perfect taste.  It is in
+reality from the ornaments that arts receive their peculiar character and
+complexion; we may add that in them we find the characteristical mark of
+a national taste, as by throwing up a feather in the air we know which
+way the wind blows, better than by a more heavy matter.
+
+The striking distinction between the works of the Roman, Bolognian, and
+Venetian schools, consists more in that general effect which is produced
+by colours than in the more profound excellences of the art; at least it
+is from thence that each is distinguished and known at first sight.  As
+it is the ornaments rather than the proportions of architecture which at
+the first glance distinguish the different orders from each other; the
+Doric is known by its triglyphs, the Ionic by its volutes, and the
+Corinthian by its acanthus.
+
+What distinguishes oratory from a cold narration, is a more liberal
+though chaste use of these ornaments which go under the name of
+figurative and metaphorical expressions; and poetry distinguishes itself
+from oratory by words and expressions still more ardent and glowing.  What
+separates and distinguishes poetry is more particularly the ornament of
+_verse_; it is this which gives it its character, and is an essential,
+without which it cannot exist.  Custom has appropriated different metre
+to different kinds of composition, in which the world is not perfectly
+agreed.  In England the dispute is not yet settled which is to be
+preferred, rhyme or blank verse.  But however we disagree about what
+these metrical ornaments shall be, that some metre is essentially
+necessary is universally acknowledged.
+
+In poetry or eloquence, to determine how far figurative or metaphorical
+language may proceed, and when it begins to be affectation or beside the
+truth, must be determined by taste, though this taste we must never
+forget is regulated and formed by the presiding feelings of mankind, by
+those works which have approved themselves to all times and all persons.
+
+Thus, though eloquence has undoubtedly an essential and intrinsic
+excellence, and immovable principles common to all languages, founded in
+the nature of our passions and affections, yet it has its ornaments and
+modes of address which are merely arbitrary.  What is approved in the
+Eastern nations as grand and majestic, would be considered by the Greeks
+and Romans as turgid and inflated; and they, in return, would be thought
+by the Orientals to express themselves in a cold and insipid manner.
+
+We may add likewise to the credit of ornaments, that it is by their means
+that art itself accomplishes its purpose.  Fresnoy calls colouring, which
+is one of the chief ornaments of painting, _lena sororis_, that which
+procures lovers and admirers to the more valuable excellences of the art.
+
+It appears to be the same right turn of mind which enables a man to
+acquire the _truth_, or the just idea of what is right in the ornaments,
+as in the more stable principles of art.  It has still the same centre of
+perfection, though it is the centre of a smaller circle.
+
+To illustrate this by the fashion of dress, in which there is allowed to
+be a good or, bad taste.  The component parts of dress are continually
+changing from great to little, from short to long, but the general form
+still remains; it is still the same general dress which is comparatively
+fixed, though on a very slender foundation, but it is on this which
+fashion must rest.  He who invents with the most success, or dresses in,
+the best taste, would probably, from the same sagacity employed to
+greater purposes, have discovered equal skill, or have formed the same
+correct taste in the highest labours of art.
+
+I have mentioned taste in dress, which is certainly one of the lowest
+subjects to which this word is applied; yet, as I have before observed,
+there is a right even here, however narrow its foundation respecting the
+fashion of any particular nation.  But we have still more slender means
+of determining, in regard to the different customs of different ages or
+countries, to which to give the preference, since they seem to be all
+equally removed from nature.
+
+If an European, when he has cut off his beard, and put false hair on his
+head, or bound up his own natural hair in regular hard knots, as unlike
+nature as he can possibly make it; and having rendered them immovable by
+the help of the fat of hogs, has covered the whole with flour, laid on by
+a machine with the utmost regularity; if, when thus attired he issues
+forth, he meets a Cherokee Indian, who has bestowed as much time at his
+toilet, and laid on with equal care and attention his yellow and red
+ochre on particular parts of his forehead or cheeks, as he judges most
+becoming; whoever despises the other for this attention to the fashion of
+his country, whichever of these two first feels himself provoked to
+laugh, is the barbarian.
+
+All these fashions are very innocent, neither worth disquisition, nor any
+endeavour to alter them, as the change would, in all probability, be
+equally distant from nature.  The only circumstances against which
+indignation may reasonably be moved, are where the operation is painful
+or destructive of health, such as is practised at Otahaiti, and the
+straight lacing of the English ladies; of the last of which, how
+destructive it must be to health and long life, the professor of anatomy
+took an opportunity of proving a few days since in this Academy.
+
+It is in dress as in things of greater consequence.  Fashions originate
+from those only who have the high and powerful advantages of rank, birth,
+and fortune; as many of the ornaments of art, those at least for which no
+reason can be given, are transmitted to us, are adopted, and acquire
+their consequence from the company in which we have been used to see
+them.  As Greece and Rome are the fountains from whence have flowed all
+kinds of excellence, to that veneration which they have a right to claim
+for the pleasure and knowledge which they have afforded us, we
+voluntarily add our approbation of every ornament and every custom that
+belonged to them, even to the fashion of their dress.  For it may be
+observed that, not satisfied with them in their own place, we make no
+difficulty of dressing statues of modern heroes or senators in the
+fashion of the Roman armour or peaceful robe; we go so far as hardly to
+bear a statue in any other drapery.
+
+The figures of the great men of those nations have come down to us in
+sculpture.  In sculpture remain almost all the excellent specimens of
+ancient art.  We have so far associated personal dignity to the persons
+thus represented, and the truth of art to their manner of representation,
+that it is not in our power any longer to separate them.  This is not so
+in painting; because, having no excellent ancient portraits, that
+connection was never formed.  Indeed, we could no more venture to paint a
+general officer in a Roman military habit, than we could make a statue in
+the present uniform.  But since we have no ancient portraits, to show how
+ready we are to adopt those kind of prejudices, we make the best
+authority among the moderns serve the same purpose.  The great variety of
+excellent portraits with which Vandyke has enriched this nation, we are
+not content to admire for their real excellence, but extend our
+approbation even to the dress which happened to be the fashion of that
+age.  We all very well remember how common it was a few years ago for
+portraits to be drawn in this Gothic dress, and this custom is not yet
+entirely laid aside.  By this means it must be acknowledged very ordinary
+pictures acquired something of the air and effect of the works of
+Vandyke, and appeared therefore at first sight to be better pictures than
+they really were; they appeared so, however, to those only who had the
+means of making this association, for when made, it was irresistible.  But
+this association is nature, and refers to that Secondary truth that comes
+from conformity to general prejudice and opinion; it is therefore not
+merely fantastical.  Besides the prejudice which we have in favour of
+ancient dresses, there may be likewise other reasons, amongst which we
+may justly rank the simplicity of them, consisting of little more than
+one single piece of drapery, without those whimsical capricious forms by
+which all other dresses are embarrassed.
+
+Thus, though it is from the prejudice we have in favour of the ancients,
+who have taught us architecture, that we have adopted likewise their
+ornaments; and though we are satisfied that neither nature nor reason is
+the foundation of those beauties which we imagine we see in that art, yet
+if any one persuaded of this truth should, therefore, invent new orders
+of equal beauty, which we will suppose to be possible, yet they would not
+please, nor ought he to complain, since the old has that great advantage
+of having custom and prejudice on its side.  In this case we leave what
+has every prejudice in its favour to take that which will have no
+advantage over what we have left, but novelty, which soon destroys
+itself, and, at any rate, is but a weak antagonist against custom.
+
+These ornaments, having the right of possession, ought not to be removed
+but to make room for not only what has higher pretensions, but such
+pretensions as will balance the evil and confusion which innovation
+always brings with it.
+
+To this we may add, even the durability of the materials will often
+contribute to give a superiority to one object over another.  Ornaments
+in buildings, with which taste is principally concerned, are composed of
+materials which last longer than those of which dress is composed; it,
+therefore, makes higher pretensions to our favour and prejudice.
+
+Some attention is surely required to what we can no more get rid of than
+we can go out of ourselves.  We are creatures of prejudice; we neither
+can nor ought to eradicate it; we must only regulate, it by reason, which
+regulation by reason is, indeed, little more than obliging the lesser,
+the focal and temporary prejudices, to give way to those which are more
+durable and lasting.
+
+He, therefore, who in his practice of portrait painting wishes to dignify
+his subject, which we will suppose to be a lady, will not paint her in
+the modern dress, the familiarity of which alone is sufficient to destroy
+all dignity.  He takes care that his work shall correspond to those ideas
+and that imagination which he knows will regulate the judgment of others,
+and, therefore, dresses his figure something with the general air of the
+antique for the sake of dignity, and preserves something of the modern
+for the sake of likeness.  By this conduct his works correspond with
+those prejudices which we have in favour of what we continually see; and
+the relish of the antique simplicity corresponds with what we may call
+the, more learned and scientific prejudice.
+
+There was a statue made not long since of Voltaire, which the sculptor,
+not having that respect for the prejudices of mankind which he ought to
+have, has made entirely naked, and as meagre and emaciated as the
+original is said to be.  The consequence is what might be expected; it
+has remained in the sculptor's shop, though it was intended as a public
+ornament and a public honour to Voltaire, as it was procured at the
+expense of his cotemporary wits and admirers.
+
+Whoever would reform a nation, supposing a bad taste to prevail in it,
+will not accomplish his purpose by going directly against the stream of
+their prejudices.  Men's minds must be prepared to receive what is new to
+them.  Reformation is a work of time.  A national taste, however wrong it
+may be, cannot be totally change at once; we must yield a little to the
+prepossession which has taken hold on the mind, and we may then bring
+people to adopt what would offend them if endeavoured to be introduced by
+storm.  When Battisto Franco was employed, in conjunction with Titian,
+Paul Veronese, and Tintoret, to adorn the library of St. Mark, his work,
+Vasari says, gave less satisfaction than any of the others: the dry
+manner of the Roman school was very ill calculated to please eyes that
+had been accustomed to the luxuriance, splendour, and richness of
+Venetian colouring.  Had the Romans been the judges of this work,
+probably the determination would have been just contrary; for in the more
+noble parts of the art Battisto Franco was, perhaps, not inferior to any
+of his rivals.
+
+* * * * *
+
+Gentlemen,--It has been the main scope and principal end of this
+discourse to demonstrate the reality of a standard in taste, as well as
+in corporeal beauty; that a false or depraved taste is a thing as well
+known, as easily discovered, as anything that is deformed, misshapen, or
+wrong in our form or outward make; and that this knowledge is derived
+from the uniformity of sentiments among mankind, from whence proceeds the
+knowledge of what are the general habits of nature, the result of which
+is an idea of perfect beauty.
+
+If what has been advanced be true, that besides this beauty or truth
+which is formed on the uniform eternal and immutable laws of nature, and
+which of necessity can be but one; that besides this one immutable verity
+there are likewise what we have called apparent or secondary truths
+proceeding from local and temporary prejudices, fancies, fashions, or
+accidental connection of ideas; if it appears that these last have still
+their foundation, however slender, in the original fabric of our minds,
+it follows that all these truths or beauties deserve and require the
+attention of the artist in proportion to their stability or duration, or
+as their influence is more or less extensive.  And let me add that as
+they ought not to pass their just bounds, so neither do they, in a well-
+regulated taste, at all prevent or weaken the influence of these general
+principles, which alone can give to art its true and permanent dignity.
+
+To form this just taste is undoubtedly in your own power, but it is to
+reason and philosophy that you must have recourse; from them we must
+borrow the balance by which is to be weighed and estimated the value of
+every pretension that intrudes itself on your notice.
+
+The general objection which is made to the introduction of philosophy
+into the regions of taste is, that it checks and restrains the flights of
+the imagination, and gives that timidity which an over-carefulness not to
+err or act contrary to reason is likely to produce.
+
+It is not so.  Fear is neither reason nor philosophy.  The true spirit of
+philosophy by giving knowledge gives a manly confidence, and substitutes
+rational firmness in the place of vain presumption.  A man of real taste
+is always a man of judgment in other respects; and those inventions which
+either disdain or shrink from reason, are generally, I fear, more like
+the dreams of a distempered brain than the exalted enthusiasm of a sound
+and true genius.  In the midst of the highest flights of fancy or
+imagination, reason ought to preside from first to last, though I admit
+her more powerful operation is upon reflection.
+
+I cannot help adding that some of the greatest names of antiquity, and
+those who have most distinguished themselves in works of genius and
+imagination, were equally eminent for their critical skill.  Plato,
+Aristotle, Cicero, and Horace; and among the moderns, Boileau, Corneille,
+Pope, and Dryden, are at least instances of genius not being destroyed by
+attention or subjection to rules and science.  I should hope, therefore,
+that the natural consequence likewise of what has been said would be to
+excite in you a desire of knowing the principles and conduct of the great
+masters of our art, and respect and veneration for them when known.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEVEN DISCOURSES ON ART***
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