ng given, all the rest seems to grow out of and be
assimilated to it, by the unfailing process of a studious imagination.
Like his own Orion, he overlooks the surrounding scene, appears to 'take
up the isles as a very little thing, and to lay the earth in a balance.'
With a laborious and mighty grasp, he puts nature into the mould of the
ideal and antique; and was among painters (more than any one else) what
Milton was among poets. There is in both something of the same pedantry,
the same stiffness, the same elevation, the same grandeur, the same
mixture of art and nature, the same richness of borrowed materials, the
same unity of character. Neither the poet nor the painter lowered the
subjects they treated, but filled up the outline in the fancy, and added
strength and reality to it; and thus not only satisfied, but surpassed
the expectations of the spectator and the reader. This is held for the
triumph and the perfection of works of art. To give us nature, such as
we see it, is well and deserving of praise; to give us nature, such
as we have never seen, but have often wished to see it, is better, and
deserving of higher praise. He who can show the world in its first naked
glory, with the hues of fancy spread over it, or in its high and palmy
state, with the gravity of history stamped on the proud monuments of
vanished empire,--who, by his 'so potent art,' can recall time past,
transport us to distant places, and join the regions of imagination (a
new conquest) to those of reality,--who shows us not only what Nature
is, but what she has been, and is capable of,--he who does this, and
does it with simplicity, with truth, and grandeur, is lord of Nature and
her powers; and his mind is universal, and his art the master-art!

There is nothing in this 'more than natural,' if criticism could
be persuaded to think so. The historic painter does not neglect or
contravene Nature, but follows her more closely up into her fantastic
heights or hidden recesses. He demonstrates what she would be in
conceivable circumstances and under implied conditions. He 'gives to
airy nothing a local habitation,' not 'a name.' At his touch, words
start up into images, thoughts become things. He clothes a dream, a
phantom, with form and colour, and the wholesome attributes of reality.
_His_ art is a second nature; not a different one. There are those,
indeed, who think that not to copy nature is the rule for attaining
perfection. Because they cannot