y the efficacy of each other. The Italian attends only
to the invariable, the great and general ideas which are fixed and
inherent in universal 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 these petty peculiarities is the
very cause of this naturalness so much admired in the Dutch pictures,
which, if we suppose it to be a beauty, is certainly of a lower order,
which ought to give place to a beauty of a superior kind, since 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 possessing this mechanical merit,
I should not scruple to say, they would not only receive no advantage,
but would lose, in a great measure, the effect which they now have on
every mind susceptible of great and noble ideas. His works may be said
to be all genius and soul; and why should they be loaded with heavy
matter, which can only counteract his purpose by retarding the progress
of the imagination?

If this opinion should be thought one of the wild extravagancies of
enthusiasm, I shall only say, that those who censure it are not
conversant in the works of the great masters. It is very difficult to
determine the exact degree of enthusiasm that the arts of painting and
poetry may admit. There may, perhaps, be too great an indulgence, as
well as too great a restraint of imagination; and if the one produces
incoherent monsters, the other produces what is full as bad, lifeless
insipidity. An intimate knowledge of the passions, and good sense, but
not common sense, must at last determine its limits. It has been
thought, and I believe with reason, that Michael Angelo sometimes
trangressed those limits; and I think I have seen figures of him of
which it was very difficult to determine whether they were in the
highest degree sublime or extremely ridiculous. Such faults may be said
to be the ebullitions of genius; but at least he had this merit, that he
never was insipid, and whatever passion his works may excite, they will
always escape contempt.

What I have had under consideration is the sublimest 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.