nter must have the power of contracting as well as
dilating his sight; because he that does not at all express particulars
expresses nothing; yet it is certain that a nice discrimination of
minute circumstances and a punctilious delineation of them, whatever
excellence it may have (and I do not mean to detract from it), never did
confer on the artist the character of Genius.'

At page 53 we find the following words:

'Whether it is the human figure, an animal, or even inanimate objects,
there is nothing, however unpromising in appearance, but may be raised
into dignity, convey sentiment, and produce emotion, in the hands of a
Painter of genius. What was said of Virgil, that he threw even the
dung about the ground with an air of dignity, may be applied to Titian;
whatever he touched, however naturally mean, and habitually familiar, by
a kind of magic he invested with grandeur and importance.'--No, not by
magic, but by seeking and finding in individual nature, and combined
with details of every kind, that grace and grandeur and unity of effect
which Sir Joshua supposes to be a mere creation of the artist's brain!
Titian's practice was, I conceive, to give general appearances with
individual forms and circumstances: Sir Joshua's theory goes too often,
and in its prevailing bias, to separate the two things as inconsistent
with each other, and thereby to destroy or bring into question that
union of striking effect with accuracy of resemblance in which the
essence of sound art (as far as relates to imitation) consists.

Farther, as Sir Joshua is inclined to merge the details of individual
objects in general effect, so he is resolved to reduce all beauty or
grandeur in natural objects to a central form or abstract idea of a
certain class, so as to exclude all peculiarities or deviations from
this ideal standard as unfit subjects for the artist's pencil, and as
polluting his canvas with deformity. As the former principle went to
destroy all exactness and solidity in particular things, this goes to
confound all variety, distinctness, and characteristic force in the
broader scale of nature. There is a principle of conformity in nature
or of something in common between a number of individuals of the same
class, but there is also a principle of contrast, of discrimination and
identity, which is equally essential in the system of the universe and
in the structure of our ideas both of art and nature. Sir Joshua would
hardly neutral