subjects, the meanness of its forms, expressions, and personages, and an absence of all invention. Without raising any question about the difficulty, the skill, or the merit of these images of plebeian nature, I shall rest contented with pointing out to observation, that class of persons to whom they are most pleasing. Present a picture of Teniers and one of Poussin to the vulgar multitude before mentioned; there can be no doubt as to which would obtain the preference.

It is requisite to make some distinction, on this point of criticism, respecting the greater or less estimation due to the works, in which art is limited to that local, partial, or individual truth, which I cannot allow to be the definitive aim of imitation. And first of all it is necessary to distinguish between the kind of imitation, and what is termed style, taste, manner, as applied to the work of imitation. Thus the Flemish pictures are of a kind, which, presenting to us the mechanism of art in its greatest perfection, have no pretension beyond that of speaking to the eye, without addressing aught to the mind. The pleasure these works afford is not the only one to be expected from imitation. But we can require nothing more from works which neither give promise of, nor are fitted to produce any thing more.

There are others which, though destined to a higher purpose, are, from the taste and manner in which they are conceived and executed, far from respond

ing to it. I could cite instances in every period. But, that I may be the better understood, I will confine myself to those of the earliest ages of art, when it was not yet brought to perfection. In those works, despite the charm their want of affectation, and their simplicity invest them with, we nevertheless discover additional proof of the positions here maintained: namely, that what is too frequently taken for the end of imitation, is not so; since the pleasure arising from individual truth, only exists in the productions of that period, from the absence of what art had not then acquired the means of producing.

It needs but to complete the parallel, in order to prove to demonstration what we have just advanced. If those works, conceived and executed in the spirit of portraiture, (I speak of those of the fifteenth century,) be compared with the works of the sixteenth, (such as those of Michael Angelo, Rafaello, and their schools,) it will not be difficult to obtain a clear and distinct idea of the description of pleasure which I maintain ought to constitute the true end of imitation.

What are those paintings of the early stages of the renovation of art? Portraits, doubtless faithful ones, of the men of that period. Physiognomy, attitudes, attire, character, form, and expression, in all, the exact image of the personages then existing, after the manner that they really were, the fashion of the habiliments, costumes, and acces

saries of the times. Well! those paintings had not, for contemporaries, and still have not, for us, (setting aside the interest imparted to them by antiquity,) any other value than that appertaining to the repetition of what one sees; they make no other impression than that of a portrait. Nothing more can be expected, and the most lively imagination would in vain seek for any other pleasure, from them. Even subjects of history, either ancient or drawn from a foreign country, personages to whatever age or nation they may be supposed to belong, when subjected to the same local costume, the same reality of portraiture, are insufficient to carry the spectator beyond this limited point of view, and, whatever useful lessons the artist may derive from them, such works leave us devoid of ideas, impressions, images, feelings and desires.

Pass we to the next century and the works of art when fully developed. What a different world do Rafaello and the grand masters of his time open up to us! How many ideas and images that would have been unknown to us, had not imitation attained its aim! What another kind of truth, and in what a different sphere is it revealed to the artist! By how new a manner of viewing nature is her realm enlarged! How much additional food for the imagination, how many new objects for the mind to observe and become acquainted with, and fruitful subjects for taste to criticise! What

an unfailing source of pleasures for the understanding and the sentiment! In short, what creations, for the existence of which we are indebted o imitation, not that which is limited to showing us vhat is real, but that which, by the aid of what s, shows us what has no real existence !

I shall not stop to apply the same standard of criticism to all the fine arts, but shall content myself with indicating that the same result would attend it.

For, what works are they, of which the succession of years and ages has been as yet insufficient to search out all the merits, to number all the beauties, or to exhaust admiration? What conceptions, whether epic or dramatic, are they, from which, with inexhaustible impressions, we receive pleasures ever new? What productions of the chisel are those which we see again and again as though we had never seen them: because the mind finds in them wherewith to find on for ever?

For myself, I have no hesitation in saying, that they are the works which have been conceived in that kind of imitation, the model of which can ? be nowhere shown,

CHAPTER IV.

WHAT IMITATION IT IS, WHOSE MODEL CANNOT BE SHOWN, AND WHAT NAME IS GIVEN TO IT.

The poet, says Plautus, when he sets about composing, seeks what is nowhere, and yet finds it. What does Plautus mean by seeking, and finding what is nowhere?

The answer to this question, contains the element of our theory, concerning what is the end of imitation.

From all that has gone before, there can, I presume, be no question, that to please, and, consequently, to please as much as possible, is the goal to which imitation tends; and that the greatest pleasure cannot be that of the senses, but, on the contrary, that of the mind; in other words, that which the understanding or the imagination procures. Now, as already seen, that which constitutes the object of physical or sensual pleasure, is of a nature to be met with at all times, and in all places, by the organ of the