ssing
the most entire appreciation of the excellence of the Torso, were to sit
down, pen in hand, to try and tell us wherein the peculiar truth of each
line consisted? Could any words that he could use make us feel the
hairbreadth of depth and distance on which all depends? or end in
anything more than bare assertions of the inferiority of this line to
that, which, if we did not perceive for ourselves, no explanation could
ever illustrate to us? He might as well endeavor to explain to us by
words some taste or other subject of sense, of which we had no
experience. And so it is with all truths of the highest order; they are
separated from those of average precision by points of extreme delicacy,
which none but the cultivated eye can in the least feel, and to express
which, all words are absolutely meaningless and useless. Consequently,
in all that I have been saying of the truth of artists, I have been able
to point out only coarse, broad, and explicable matters; I have been
perfectly unable to express (and indeed I have made no endeavor to
express) the finely drawn and distinguished truth in which all the real
excellence of art consists. All those truths which I have been able to
explain and demonstrate in Turner, are such as any artist of ordinary
powers of observation ought to be capable of rendering. It is
disgraceful to omit them; but it is no very great credit to observe
them. I have indeed proved that they have been neglected, and
disgracefully so, by those men who are commonly considered the Fathers
of Art; but in showing that they have been observed by Turner, I have
only proved him to be _above_ other men in knowledge of truth, I have
not given any conception of his own positive rank as a Painter of
Nature. But it stands to reason, that the men, who in broad, simple, and
demonstrable matters are perpetually violating truth, will not be
particularly accurate or careful in carrying out delicate and refined,
and undemonstrable matters; and it stands equally to reason, that the
man who, as far as argument or demonstration can go, is found invariably
truthful, will, in all probability, be truthful to the last line, and
shadow of a line. And such is, indeed, the case with every touch of this
consummate artist; the essential excellence--all that constitutes the
real and exceeding value of his works--is beyond and above expression;
it is a truth inherent in every line, and breathing in every hue, too
delicate and exquis