ject. But let
the reader make the effort, and consider seriously what he would give
at any moment to have the power of arresting the fairest scenes, those
which so often rise before him only to vanish; to stay the cloud in
its fading, the leaf in its trembling, and the shadows in their
changing; to bid the fitful foam be fixed upon the river, and the
ripples be everlasting upon the lake; and then to bear away with him
no darkened or feeble sun-stain (though even that is beautiful), but a
counterfeit which should seem no counterfeit-the true and perfect
image of life indeed. Or rather (for the full majesty of such a power
is not thus sufficiently expressed) let him consider that it would be
in effect nothing else than a capacity of transporting himself at any
moment into any scene--a gift as great as can be possessed by a
disembodied spirit: and suppose, also, this necromancy embracing not
only the present but the past, and enabling us seemingly to enter into
the very bodily presence of men long since gathered to the dust; to
behold them in act as they lived, but--with greater privilege than
ever was granted to the companions of those transient acts of life--to
see them fastened at our will in the gesture and expression of an
instant, and stayed, on the eve of some great deed, in immortality of
burning purpose. Conceive, so far as it is possible, such power as
this, and then say whether the art which conferred it is to be spoken
lightly of, or whether we should not rather reverence, as half divine,
a gift which would go so far as to raise us into the rank, and invest
us with the felicities, of angels?

Yet such would imitative art be in its perfection. Not by any means an
easy thing, as Reynolds supposes it. Far from being easy, it is so
utterly beyond all human power that we have difficulty even in
conceiving its nature or results--the best art we as yet possess comes
so far short of it.

But we must not rashly come to the conclusion that such art would,
indeed, be the highest possible. There is much to be considered
hereafter on the other side; the only conclusion we are as yet
warranted in forming is, that Reynolds had no right to speak lightly
or contemptuously of imitative art; that in fact, when he did so, he
had not conceived its entire nature, but was thinking of some vulgar
conditions of it, which were the only ones known to him, and that,
therefore, his whole endeavour to explain the difference between great