lled 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 hu