ceeding in its labour of successive observations from the particular to the general; the effects of which are alike evident in many of the Grecian works.

Furthermore, those effects are daily manifested before our eyes, in the works of pupils and beginners. Certain it is, that in great things as in little, and whatever may be the point of view selected for observation, we shall always find that the imitator takes at first an individual or partial model. His first, his only care, is at the stage we are speaking of, to render the result of his imitation as like its original as possible, without troubling/himself about or even thinking of, making himself acquainted with what may be defective or imperfect in that original.

Indeed, to judge of the qualities and defects of the individual, or of the particular model, requires and leads to the supposition of a knowledge of generalities or of the general model. Now, such knowledge follows only in the train of numerous comparisons, which are always necessarily the result of long experience.

In following out, either by reasoning or actual example, the progress of the operations of the mind, we become convinced that this experience, acquired at length from drawing parallels between a great number of models, must render perceptible to the imitator,

That extreme fidelity in adhering to the reality

to the level of that of the individual, whether it be that chance has afforded the model to the artist, or even that he himself has made choice of it. Since it is certain that no individual has been, or ever can be, produced (according to the system of nature), with that complete combination of outward perfections, which it is the office of art to realize in its image as one congenial whole, it must be admitted that a work done after a single model, will yield the palm to nature. It would in the first place yield it, by the whole distance that separates inert matter from the living being, and in the next, by the whole interval existing between the individual, considered as a partial and imperfect specimen, and the universal type of all perfection.

Nature and art have scarcely an approximate point in the formation of their works. While nature has a thousand different ends in view, art has but one. There is the same inequality in their means. The imitator errs greatly in supposing, that because he appropriates one part of nature, he can therefore embody them all, and supply her place. One of the prerogatives of the natural being, is that of having the power to please us, although far from combining every exterior quality. Thus bodies endued with life, and animated by intelligence, please us on a thousand points, that have no relation with those from which perfection of forms proceeds.

It was acknowledged that in the moral world it would be useless to expect from a single character, the universality of the qualities which our minds are capable of forming an idea of, that it would be vain to seek in a single man the perfected compound of all the excellencies with which each is differently endowed. It was acknowledged that in the natural course of things, the subjects of historical action proper for poetical imitation, could never be presented to the poet with that agreement of circumstances, and that aggregate of conditions so necessary to the effect which the art of the poet is bound to produce. Lastly, the conviction followed, that as nature neither had furnished nor could furnish any perfect and complete model for imitation, as regards art, so it remained for the genius of the artist itself to complete by a judicious combination, the qualities of the particular model.

This the true imitator did: and he could alone do it by generalizing, through extensive observation, the study of nature, and reducing it to a system. Now, this system is nothing else than the ideal type of imitation, a type formed not on this or that isolated work of nature, but on the generality of the laws and motives manifested in the universal whole of her works.

It was therefore no longer the particular work, but the general motive of the supreme Worker, that became the true regulator of the operations

lision with that of nature: viz., that if the natural being has defects on any point corresponding with the resources of one art, those defects are frequently counterbalanced by beauties occurring under some aspect corresponding with another art. Thus even though the individual model had no other advantage over its copy, which is necessarily incomplete, than that of compensating a blemish of form, for instance, by the charm of colour, one may see at once, how much the art which is reduced to one of those two aspects, is interested in bringing to bear on that one, the sum total of perfections relative to it, perfections the principle of which can alone be revealed, and the means of execution furnished, by the ideal model.

CHAPTER VIII.

CONTINUATION OF THE SAME SUBJECT.

THE foregoing observations have naturally a more sensible relation with the arts of design, than with the other arts. Sensible is here the proper word, since by the principles of the theory of the ideal we find, that, in the imitation of bodies, there are some cases which come under the cognizance of the senses. We have therefore willingly made use of instances of this description in order to exemplify and explain our theory with greater clearness.

A perfect uniformity in this respect reigns throughout all the arts. Whether an art belong by the nature and means of its appropriate imitation, to the province of bodies and matter, or, being more particularly dependent on the mind, be allied to the moral world, as are the different kinds of poetry; both have always a twofold model in nature, and in both alike is there room for error as to the idea and meaning attached to the word nature.