te of Oxford;" we do not look upon him as a
bit the better judge for all that, seeing that many have practised it
too fondly and too ignorantly all their lives, and that Claude, and
Salvator, and Gaspar Poussin must, according to him, have been in this
predicament, and more especially do we decline from bowing down at his
dictation, when we find him advocating _any_ "_surer ground than
feeling or taste_." Now, considering that thus, _in initio_, he sets
aside feeling and taste, the reader will not be astonished to find a
very substantial reason given for his contempt of the afore-mentioned
old masters; it is, he says, "because I look with the most devoted
veneration upon Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, and Da Vinci, that I do not
distrust the principles which induce me to look with contempt," &c. We
do not exactly see how these great men, who were not landscape
painters, can very well be compared with those who were, but from some
general principles of art, in which the world have not as yet found
any very extraordinary difference. But we do humbly suggest, that
Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, and Da Vinci, are in their practice, and
principles, if you please, quite as unlike Messrs David Cox, Copley
Fielding, J. D. Harding, Clarkson Stanfield, and Turner--the very men
whom our author brings forward as the excellent of the earth, in
opposition _to all_ old masters whatever, excepting only Michael
Angelo, Raffaelle, and Da Vinci, to whom nevertheless, by a perverse
pertinacity of their respective geniuses, they bear no resemblance
whatever--as they are to Claude, Salvator, and Gaspar Poussin. We do
not by any means intend to speak disrespectfully of these our English
artists, but we must either mistrust those principles which cause them
to stand in opposition to the great Italians, or to conceive that our
author has really discovered no such differing principles, and which
possibly may not exist at all. Nor will we think so meanly of the
taste, the good feeling, and the good sense of these men, as to
believe that they think themselves at all flattered by any admiration
founded on such an irrational contempt. They well know that Michael
Angelo, Raffaelle, and Da Vinci, have been admired, together with
Claude, Salvator, and Gaspar Poussin, and they do not themselves
desire to be put upon a separate list. The author concludes his
introduction with a very bad reason for his partiality to modern
masters, and it is put in most ambitious