er
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 ap