this strikes at once at the emoluments of the profession, who
are most of them (by God's will) portrait painters. If he eulogises
the Antique, and speaks highly of the Old Masters, he is supposed to
be actuated by envy to living painters and native talent. If, again, he
insists on a knowledge of anatomy as essential to correct drawing, this
would seem to imply a want of it in our most eminent designers. Every
plan, suggestion, argument, that has the general purposes and principles
of art for its object, is thwarted, scouted, ridiculed, slandered, as
having a malignant aspect towards the profits and pretensions of the
great mass of flourishing and respectable artists in the country. This
leads to irritation and ill-will on all sides. The obstinacy of the
constituted authorities keeps pace with the violence and extravagance
opposed to it; and they lay all the blame on the folly and mistakes they
have themselves occasioned or increased. It is considered as a personal
quarrel, not a public question; by which means the dignity of the body
is implicated in resenting the slips and inadvertencies of its members,
not in promoting their common and declared objects. In this sort of
wretched _tracasserie_ the Barrys and H----s stand no chance with the
Catons, the Tubbs, and F----s. Sir Joshua even was obliged to hold
himself aloof from them, and Fuseli passes as a kind of nondescript, or
one of his own grotesques. The air of an academy, in short, is not
the air of genius and immortality; it is too close and heated, and
impregnated with the notions of the common sort. A man steeped in a
corrupt atmosphere of this description is no longer open to the genial
impulses of nature and truth, nor sees visions of ideal beauty, nor
dreams of antique grace and grandeur, nor has the finest works of art
continually hovering and floating through his uplifted fancy; but the
images that haunt it are rules of the academy, charters, inaugural
speeches, resolutions passed or rescinded, cards of invitation to a
council-meeting, or the annual dinner, prize medals, and the king's
diploma, constituting him a gentleman and esquire. He 'wipes out all
trivial, fond records'; all romantic aspirations; 'the Raphael grace,
the Guido air'; and the commands of the academy alone 'must live within
the book and volume of his brain, unmixed with baser matter.' It may be
doubted whether any work of lasting reputation and universal interest
can spring up in this soil,