ll of
the Titans in fresco, on the ceiling and walls of the Sistine Chapel,
he was incomparable; but that gigantic style was unsuitable for lesser
pictures or rooms of ordinary proportions. By the study of his
masterpieces, subsequent painters have often been led astray; they
have aimed at force of expression to the neglect of delicacy in
execution. This defect is, in an especial manner, conspicuous in Sir
Joshua Reynolds, who worshipped Michael Angelo with the most devoted
fervour; and through him it has descended to Lawrence, and nearly the
whole modern school of England. When we see Sir Joshua's noble glass
window in Magdalen College, Oxford, we behold the work of a worthy
pupil of Michael Angelo; we see the great style of painting in its
proper place, and applied to its appropriate object. But when we
compare his portraits, or imaginary pieces in oil, with those of
Titian, Velasquez, or Vandyke, the inferiority is manifest. It is not
in the design but the finishing; not in the conception but the
execution. The colours are frequently raw and harsh; the details or
distant parts of the piece ill-finished or neglected. The bold neglect
of Michael Angelo is very apparent. Raphael, with less original genius
than his immortal master, had more taste and much greater delicacy of
pencil; his conceptions, less extensive and varied, are more perfect;
his finishing is always exquisite. Unity of emotion was his great
object in design; equal delicacy of finishing in execution. Thence he
has attained by universal consent the highest place in painting.

"Nothing," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, "is denied to well-directed
labour; nothing is to be attained without it." "Excellence in any
department," says Johnson, "can now be attained only by the labour of
a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price." These words
should ever be present to the minds of all who aspire to rival the
great of former days; who feel in their bosoms a spark of the spirit
which led Homer, Dante, and Michael Angelo to immortality. In a
luxurious age, comfort or station is deemed the chief good of life; in
a commercial community, money becomes the universal object of
ambition. Thence our acknowledged deficiency in the fine arts; thence
our growing weakness in the higher branches of literature. Talent
looks for its reward too soon. Genius seeks an immediate recompense;
long protracted exertions are never attempted; great things are not
done, because grea