has ever seen. In Michael Angelo's case, the period of growth,
of genuine art, may be said to have lasted until after his sixtieth
year. But look, says Taine, at the works which he executed in his old
age; consider the Conversion of St. Paul, and the Last Judgment, painted
when he was nearly seventy. Even those who are not connoisseurs can see
that these frescos are painted by rule, that the artist, having stocked
his memory with a certain set of forms, is making use of them to
fill out his tableau; that he wantonly multiplies queer attitudes and
ingenious foreshortenings; that the lively invention, the grand
outburst of feeling, the perfect truth, by which his earlier works are
distinguished, have disappeared; and that, if he is still superior
to all others, he is nevertheless inferior to himself. The careers of
Scott, of Goethe, and of Voltaire will furnish parallel examples. In
every school of art, too, the flourishing period is followed by one of
decline; and in every case the decline is due to a failure to imitate
the living models. In painting, we have the exaggerated foreshorteners
and muscle-makers who copied Michael Angelo; the lovers of theatrical
decorations who succeeded Titian and Giorgione and the degenerate
boudoir-painters who followed Claucle and Poussin. In literature, we
have the versifiers, epigrammatists, and rhetors of the Latin decadence;
the sensual and declamatory dramatists who represent the last stages
of old English comedy; and the makers of sonnets and madrigals, or
conceited euphemists of the Gongora school, in the decline of Italian
and Spanish poetry. Briefly it may be said, that the masters copy
nature and the pupils copy the masters. In this way are explained the
constantly recurring phenomena of decline in art, and thus, also, it
is seen that art is perfect in proportion as it successfully imitates
nature.

But we are not to conclude that absolute imitation is the sole and
entire object of art. Were this the case, the finest works would be
those which most minutely correspond to their external prototypes. In
sculpture, a mould taken from the living features is that which gives
the most faithful representation of the model; but a well-moulded
bust is far from being equal to a good statue. Photography is in
many respects more accurate than painting; but no one would rank a
photograph, however exquisitely executed, with an original picture. And
finally, if exact imitation were the supreme