ng "distinct
from what is beautiful," he confines his subject to "ideas of truth,
beauty, and relation," and by these he proposes to test all artists.
Truth of facts and truth of thoughts are here considered; the first
necessary, but the latter the highest: we should say that it is the
latter which alone constitutes art, and that here art begins where
nature ends. Facts are the foundation necessary to the superstructure;
the foundation of which must be there, though unseen, unnoticed in
contemplation of the noble edifice. Very great stress is laid upon
"the exceeding importance of truth;" which none will question,
reminding us of the commencement of Bacon's essay, "What is truth?
said laughing Pilate, and would not wait for an answer." "Nothing,"
says our author, "can atone for the want of truth, not the most
brilliant imagination, the most playful fancy, the most pure feeling
(supposing that feeling _could_ be pure and false at the same time,)
not the most exalted conception, nor the most comprehensive grasp of
intellect, can make amends for the want of truth." Now, there is much
parade in all this, surely truth, as such in reference to art, is _in_
the brilliancy of imagination, _in_ the playfulness, without which is
no fancy, _in_ the feeling, and _in_ the very exaltation of a
conception; and intellect has no _grasp_ that does not grasp a truth.
When he speaks of nature as "immeasurably superior to all that the
human mind can conceive," and professes to "pay no regard whatsoever
to what may be thought beautiful, or sublime, or imaginative," and to
"look only for truth, bare, clear downright statement of facts," he
seems to forget what nature is, as adopted by, as taken into art; it
is not only external nature, but external nature in conjunction with
the human mind. Nor does he, in fact, adhere in the subsequent part of
his work to this his declaration; for he loses it in his "fervour of
imagination," when he actually examines the works of "the great living
painter, who is, I believe, imagined by the majority of the public to
paint more falsehood and less fact than any other known master." Here
our author jumps at once into his monomania--his adoration of the
works of Turner, which he examines largely and microscopically, as it
suits his whim, and imagines all the while he is describing and
examining nature; and not unfrequently he tells you, that nature and
Turner are the same, and that he "invites the same ceaseless