DISCOURSE V.

CIRCUMSPECTION REQUIRED IN ENDEAVOURING TO UNITE CONTRARY EXCELLENCIES. THE EXPRESSION OF A MIXED PASSION NOT TO BE ATTEMPTED. -£XAMPLES OF THOSE WHO EXCELLED IN THE GREAT STYLE; RAFFAELLE, MICHAEL ANGELO, THOSE TWO EXTRAORDINARY MEN COMPARED WITH EACH OTHER. -THE CHARACTERISTICAL STYLE.—SALVATOR ROSA MENTIONED AS AN EXAMPLE OF THAT STYLE; AND OPPOSED TO CARLO MARATTI-SKETCH OF THỂ CHARACTERS OF POUSSIN AND RUBENS. THESE TWO PAINTERS ENTIRELY DISSIMILAR, BUT CONSISTENT WITH THEMSELVES. THIS CONSISTENCY REQUIRED IN ALL PARTS OF THE ART.

GENTLEMEN,

IPURPOSE 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 excellencies 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.

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My advice in a word is this: keep your principal attention fixed upon the higher excellencies. If you compass them, and cómpass 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 artist of the highest order.

thus far, you can

add any, or all, of the subordinate qualifi

cations, it is my wish and advice that you

should not neglect them.

But this is as

much a matter of circumspection and caurion at least, as of eagerness and pursuit.

The mind is apt to be distracted by a multiplicity of objects; and that scale of perisction which I wish always to be preserved, is in the greatest danger of being only disordered, and even inverted.

Some excellencies bear to be united, and are improved by union; orbers are of a discordant nature; and the attempt to join them, only produces a harsh jamming of incongruent principles. The attempt to unite conrary excellencies (of form, for instance) in a single figure, can never escape degenerating into the monstrous, but by sinking into the insipid; by taking away its marked character, and weakening its expression.

This remark is true to a certain degres with regard to the passions. If you mean to preserve the most perfect beauty in its muse perfect state, you cannot express the passions, all of which produce distortion and defor

mity, more or less, in the most beautiful faces.

Guido, from want of choice in adapting his subject to his ideas and his powers, or from 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 some even of 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 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 excellencies 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 puttures of Raffaelle, where the Criticks have described their own imaginations, or indeed where the excellent master himself may have attempted this expression of pastions above the powers of the art; and has, therefore, by an indistinct and imperfect marking, left mom for every imagination, with equal protacility to find a passion of Es cL That has been, and what can be done in the a, 3 sufficiently difficult; we need not be mar fied or discouraged at not being able to mecute the conceptions of a romanck ima pination. Art has its boundaries, though magination has none. We can easy, is de ancients, suppose a Jupiter to be possessed of all those powers and perfections valdi me subordinate Deities were endowed with sepa rately. Yet, when they employed thels an to represent him, they confaed his charac ter to majesty alone. Pliny, therefore, though we are under great obligations to him for the information he has given us in relanon to the works of the antient artists, is very frequency wrong when he speaks of them, which le