and inevitable a power over his heart. He casts
about for the cause of his delight, and can discover no other than
that he thought the picture like reality.

In another, perhaps, a still larger number of cases, such language
will be found to be that of simple ignorance--the ignorance of persons
whose position in life compels them to speak of art, without having
any real enjoyment of it. It is inexcusably required from people of
the world, that they should see merit in Claudes[45] and Titians; and
the only merit which many persons can either see or conceive in them
is, that they must be "like nature."

In other cases, the deceptive power of the art is really felt to be a
source of interest and amusement. This is the case with a large number
of the collectors of Dutch pictures. They enjoy seeing what is flat
made to look round, exactly as a child enjoys a trick of legerdemain:
they rejoice in flies which the spectator vainly attempts to brush
away,[46] and in dew which he endeavours to dry by putting the picture
in the sun. They take it for the greatest compliment to their
treasures that they should be mistaken for windows; and think the
parting of Abraham and Hagar adequately represented if Hagar seems to
be really crying.[47]

It is against critics and connoisseurs of this latter stamp (of whom,
in the year 1759, the juries of art were for the most part composed)
that the essay of Reynolds, which we have been examining, was justly
directed. But Reynolds had not sufficiently considered that neither
the men of this class, nor of the two other classes above described,
constitute the entire body of those who praise Art for its
realization; and that the holding of this apparently shallow and
vulgar opinion cannot, in all cases, be attributed to the want either
of penetration, sincerity, or sense. The collectors of Gerard Dows and
Hobbimas may be passed by with a smile; and the affectations of
Walpole and simplicities of Vasari[48] dismissed with contempt or with
compassion. But very different men from these have held precisely the
same language; and, one amongst the rest, whose authority is
absolutely, and in all points, overwhelming.

There was probably never a period in which the influence of art over
the minds of men seemed to depend less on its merely _imitative_
power, than the close of the thirteenth century. No painting or
sculpture at that time reached more than a rude resemblance of
reality. Its despised persp