being general, and still farther from being dignified. He might
have seen it in an instance or two, and he mistook accident for
universality.

With respect to colouring, though it may appear at first a part of
painting merely mechanical, yet it still has its rules, and those
grounded upon that presiding principle which regulates both the great and
the little in the study of a painter. By this, the first effect of the
picture is produced; and as this is performed the spectator, as he walks
the gallery, will stop, or pass along. To give a general air of grandeur
at first view, all trifling or artful play of little lights or an
attention to a variety of tints is to be avoided; a quietness and
simplicity must reign over the whole work; to which a breadth of uniform
and simple colour will very much contribute. Grandeur of effect is
produced by two different ways, which seem entirely opposed to each
other. One is, by reducing the colours to little more than chiaroscuro,
which was often the practice of the Bolognian schools; and the other, by
making the colours very distinct and forcible, such as we see in those of
Rome and Florence; but still, the presiding principle of both those
manners is simplicity. Certainly, nothing can be more simple than
monotony, and the distinct blue, red, and yellow colours which are seen
in the draperies of the Roman and Florentine schools, though they have
not that kind of harmony which is produced by a variety of broken and
transparent colours, have that effect of grandeur that was intended.
Perhaps these distinct colours strike the mind more forcibly, from there
not being any great union between them; as martial music, which is
intended to rouse the noble passions, has its effect from the sudden and
strongly marked transitions from one note to another, which that style of
music requires; whilst in that which is intended to move the softer
passions the notes imperceptibly melt into one another.

In the same manner as the historical painter never enters into the detail
of colours, so neither does he debase his conceptions with minute
attention to the discriminations of drapery. It is the inferior style
that marks the variety of stuffs. With him, the clothing is neither
woollen, nor linen, nor silk, satin, or velvet: it is drapery; it is
nothing more. The art of disposing the foldings of the drapery make a
very considerable part of the painter's study. To make it merely natural
is a mec