icial effect: nothing great in _her_
style, for an imitator of it can produce nothing great; nothing 'to
enlarge the conceptions or warm the heart of the spectator.'

What word hath passed thy lips, Adam severe!

All that is truly grand or excellent is a figment of the imagination, a
vapid creation out of nothing, a pure effect of overlooking and scorning
the minute neatness of natural objects. This will not do. Again, Sir
Joshua lays it down without any qualification that--

'The whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists in being able to get
above all singular forms, local customs, peculiarities, and _details_ of
every kind.'

Yet we find him acknowledging a different opinion.

'I am very ready to allow' (he says, in speaking of history-painting)
'that _some_ circumstances of minuteness and particularity _frequently_
tend to give an air of truth to a piece, and _to interest the spectator
in an extraordinary manner._ Such circumstances therefore cannot wholly
be rejected; but if there be anything in the Art which requires
peculiar nicety of discernment, it is the disposition of these minute,
circumstantial parts, which, according to the judgment employed in the
choice, become so useful to truth or so injurious to grandeur.'

That's true; but the sweeping clause against 'all particularities and
details of every kind' is clearly got rid of. The undecided state of
Sir Joshua's feelings on this subject of the incompatibility between
the whole and the details is strikingly manifested in two short passages
which follow each other in the space of two pages. Speaking of some
pictures of Paul Veronese and Rubens as distinguished by the dexterity
and the unity of style displayed in them, he adds:

'It is by this, and this alone, that the mechanical power is ennobled,
and raised much above its natural rank. And it appears to me that with
propriety it acquires this character, as an instance of that superiority
with which mind predominates over matter, by contracting into one whole
what nature has made multifarious.'

This would imply that the principle of unity and integrity is only
in the mind, and that nature is a heap of disjointed, disconnected
particulars, a chaos of points and atoms. In the very next page the
following sentence occurs:

'As painting is an art, they' (the ignorant) 'think they ought to be
pleased in proportion as they see that art ostentatiously displayed;
they will from this supposition prefer