d have in nature, and that many of the parts fail of
imitation, especially to an uneducated eye. But no living authority is
of weight enough to prove that the virtues of the picture could have
been obtained at a less sacrifice, or that they are not worth the
sacrifice; and though it is perfectly possible that such may be the
case, and that what Turner has done may hereafter in some respects be
done better, I believe myself that these works are at the time of their
first appearing as perfect as those of Phidias or Leonardo; that is to
say, incapable in their way, of any improvement conceivable by human
mind.

Also, it is only by comparison with such that we are authorized to
affirm definite faults in any of his others, for we should have been
bound to speak, at least for the present, with the same modesty
respecting even his worst pictures of this class, had not his more noble
efforts given us canons of criticism.

But, as was beforehand to be expected from the difficulties he grappled
with, Turner is exceedingly unequal; he appears always as a champion in
the thick of fight, sometimes with his foot on his enemies' necks,
sometimes staggered or struck to his knee; once or twice altogether
down. He has failed most frequently, as before noticed, in elaborate
compositions, from redundant quantity; sometimes, like most other men,
from over-care, as very signally in a large and most labored drawing of
Bamborough; sometimes, unaccountably, his eye for color seeming to fail
him for a time, as in a large painting of Rome from the Forum, and in
the Cicero's Villa, Building of Carthage, and the picture of this year
in the British Institution; and sometimes I am sorry to say, criminally,
from taking licenses which he must know to be illegitimate, or indulging
in conventionalities which he does not require.

[Illustration: THE DOGANA, AND SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE, VENICE.
From a painting by Turner.]

Sec. 46. Reflection of his very recent works.

On such instances I shall not insist, for the finding fault with Turner
is not, I think, either decorous in myself or like to be beneficial to
the reader.[15] The greater number of failures took place in the
transition period, when the artist was feeling for the new qualities,
and endeavoring to reconcile them with more careful elaboration of form
than was properly consistent with them. Gradually his hand became more
free, his perception and grasp of the new truths m