preference, for the caufe is evident: there is in man a perception of harmony, and a fenfibility of perfection, which touches the finer fibres of the mental texture; and before reafon can defcend from her throne, to pass her fentence upon the things compared, drives us towards the object proportioned to our faculties, by an impulse gentle, yet irrefiftible; for the harmonick fyftem of the universe, and the reciprocal magnetism of fimilar natures, are always operating towards conformity and union; nor can the powers of the foul ceafe from agitation, till they find fomething on which they can repofe. To this nothing was oppofed, and Amaranthia was acknowledged to excel Chloris.

Of the reft you may expect an account from,
ŞIR, yours,

ROBIN SPRITELY.

NUMB. 79. SATURDAY, October 20, 1759.

SIR,

To the IDLER.

YOUR acceptance of a former letter on paint

ing, gives me encouragement to offer a few

more sketches on the fame fubject.

Amongst the painters, and the writers on painting, there is one maxim univerfally admitted and continually inculcated. Imitate nature is the invariable rule; but I know none who have explained in what manner this rule is to be understood; the confequence of which is, that every one takes it in the moft obvious fenfe, that objects are reprefented naturally when they have fuch relief that they feem real. It may appear strange, perhaps, to hear this fense of the rule difputed; but it must be confidered, that if the excellency of a painter confifted only in this kind of imitation, painting must lofe its rank, and be no longer confidered as a liberal art, and fifter to poetry, this imitation being merely mechanical, in which the flowest intellect is always fure to fucceed beft; for the painter of genius cannot stoop to drudgery, in which the understanding has no part; and what pretence has the art to claim kindred with poetry, but by its powers over the imagination? To this power the painter of genius directs him; in this fenfe he ftudies nature, and often

arrives

arrives at his end, even by being unnatural in the confined fenfe of the word.

The grand style of painting requires this minute attention to be carefully avoided, and must be kept as feparate from it as the style of poetry from that of history. Poetical ornaments destroy that air of truth and plainnefs which ought to characterize hiftory; but the very being of poetry confifts in departing from this plain narration, and adopting every ornament that will warm the imagination. To defire to fee the excellences of each ftyle united, to mingle the Dutch with the Italian fchool, is to join contrarieties which cannot fubfift together, and which destroy the efficacy of each other. The Italian attends only to the invariable, the great and general ideas which are fixed and inherent in univerfal nature; the Dutch, on the contrary, to literal truth and a minute exactness in the detail, as I may say, of nature modified by accident. The attention to thefe petty peculiarities is the very caufe of this naturalnefs fo much admired in the Dutch pictures, which, if we fuppofe it to be a beauty, is certainly of a lower order, which ought to give place to a beauty of a fuperior kind, fince one cannot be obtained but by departing from the other.

If my opinion was asked concerning the works of Michael Angelo, whether they would receive any advantage from poffeffing this mechanical merit, I fhould not fcruple to fay they would not only receive no advantage, but would lofe, in a great meafure, the effect which they now have on every mind fufceptible of great and noble ideas. His works may be faid to be all genius and foul, and why

5

fhould

fhould they be loaded with heavy matter which can only counteract his purpose by retarding the progrefs of the imagination?

If this opinion fhould be thought one of the wild extravagances of enthufiafm, I fhall only fay, that those who cenfure it are not converfant in the works of the great mafters. It is very difficult to determine the exact degree of enthufiafm that the arts of painting and poetry may admit. There may perhaps be too great an indulgence, as well as too great a reftraint of imagination; and if the one produces incoherent monfters, the other produces what is full as bad, lifeless infipidity. An intimate knowledge of the paffions, and good fenfe, but not common fenfe, must at last determine its limits. It has been thought, and I believe with reason, that Michael Angelo sometimes tranfgreffed those limits; and I think I have feen figures of him of which it was very difficult to determine whether they were in the higheft degree fublime or extremely ridiculous. Such faults may be said to be the ebullitions of genius; but at leaft he had this merit, that he never was infipid, and whatever paffion his works may excite, they will always escape contempt.

What I have had under confidération is the fublimest style, particularly that of Michael Angelo, the Homer of painting. Other kinds may admit of this naturalness, which of the lowest kind is the chief merit; but in painting, as in poetry, the highest style has the least of common nature.

One may very fafely recommend a little more enthusiasm to the modern painters; too much is certainly not the vice of the prefent age. The Italians

feem

feem to have been continually declining in this refpect from the time of Michael Angelo to that of Carlo Maratti, and from thence to the very bathos of infipidity to which they are now funk; so that there is no need of remarking, that where I mentioned the Italian painters in oppofition to the Dutch, I mean not the moderns, but the heads of the old Roman and Bolognian fchools; nor did I mean to include in my idea of an Italian painter, the Venetian fchool, which may be faid to be the Dutch part of the Italian genius. I have only to add a word of advice to the painters, that however excellent they may be in painting naturally, they would not flatter themselves very much upon it; and to the connoiffeurs, that when they fee a cat or a fiddle painted fo finely, that, as the phrase is, It looks as if you could take it up, they would not for that reafon immediately compare the painter to Raffaelle and Michael Angelo.