pression of them in order to raise them to a level with the character he would represent.

With a view to this same truth it is that the artist works certain analogous changes on the outward appearance of man and the configurations of bodies, and these changes relate to the same end. There is but this difference, that in poetry ideas convey to us the forms of things and persons, and that in painting forms become the correlative signs of the ideas proposed to our conception.

Thus while the one, by the aid of metaphorical conceptions and the figures of poetical language, augments in idea the energy of a personage by the actions he is made to do, heightens the worth of his sentiments by the expression given to them, and ennobles his thoughts by a choice of words and discourse; the other effects in the same personage changes of form, physiognomy, and proportion, which, in his own peculiar language, are equivalent to the metaphors of the poet.

Now these changes are still more necessary and more imperatively required of an art which, addressed to the mind through the eyes of the body, can render moral qualities perceptible only through the intervention of the physical organs, and by means of the forms of matter.

It cannot be too strongly urged against those who complain of such like introversions in the order of sensible things, that in painting, that is,

to the eye, no greatness of soul can co-exist with a diminutive body, no worth with a feeble frame. Great and noble sentiments do not dwell within mean and stunted forms. In sculpture, it cannot be a hero under a coarse exterior.

Hence, the necessity in the arts of design, of effecting a change in all subjects, whatever they may be, in which moral and intellectual beauty is to be represented, and of changing, as well in the form of the personages as by the style of composition, the elements of real and material, for those of a conventional and ideal existence. Now every physical change is more or less perceptible to the eye.

That is to say, that in the arts of design every metaphor is more or less a metamorphosis.

I say more or less; and in fact the changes that actions and persons are made to undergo, according to the manner in which the artist represents their images, require very numerous degrees. Perhaps, indeed, they would be found numberless if one attempted to reckon up all the different gradations that genius might render perceptible in the varying expression of every subject.

But we are about to reduce the different means of transformation dependent on the arts of design to three chief modes of procedure, being those most frequently practised in ideal imitation. They consist of what are termed the styles of historical, allegorical, and symbolical composition.

CHAPTER X.

OF TRANSFORMATION IN THE HISTORICAL STYLE OF
COMPOSITION.

THE historical style of composition, understood as a metaphorical means of imitation in the works of design, will not require at our hands any lengthened observations. Since this form of composition allows also of the employment of allegory, notions which may be readily applied to it will be found in the subsequent chapters.

But it is first of all necessary to explain in what sense the word 'historical' is to be applied, according to the analysis adopted in our theory, and indeed according to the actual usage of the arts. It usually serves to designate that division of the art of painting in which the highest subjects are treated, and it establishes in this art a like distinction, with respect to worth and superiority, as that which has appeared to us to separate the imitation belonging to the ideal style from that belonging to what may be termed the low style,

as seen in the works of the Dutch and Flemish school.

A comparison between a picture of Raffaello, and another of Teniers will be found a sufficient illustration of the above distinction. Although it is probable that the name of historical painter, in opposition to that of the painter of low or domestic pieces, arose from the circumstance of the former usually representing subjects and personages drawn from history, yet it must not be supposed that the title historical' does not equally belong to pictures which express subjects taken from other categories, as poetry or fable. In fact, and moreover according to the custom of the profession, the word 'historical' whether applied to the kind of subject, the character of design, or the nature and style of composition, may be best defined negatively, by saying that it includes every subject, design, invention, and composition that may be looked upon as differing from, or opposed to, the style above mentioned, which affects low, homely, or trifling subjects, and is limited to the imitation of reality.

Thus it is sufficiently evident that the historical style of composition, considered as a means of ideal imitation, cannot exist but by the aid of metaphor, and by virtue of some transformation of the elements of reality.

The transformation belonging to the historical style of composition is not the less appropriate to

the genius of imitation, because it is less absolute than that of the two other styles of which we shall hereafter treat. The painter has the same right and power of changing the appearance of his subject. With regard even to those which he draws from the truest and best authenticated narratives, he is equally under the necessity of recomposing the substance of them, and changing their details and circumstances. His first care must be to enhance the proportions, and refine the physiognomy of all his personages.

If the historical style does not go so far in its changes as to arrive at absolute fiction, which privilege belongs to the other styles (see the succeeding Chapter), and if the metaphor is not urged so far as to become metamorphosis, it is because this form of composition holds relation with reason as well as with imagination. Grand, noble, and dignified in its character, it would seem rather to be analagous with eloquence than with poetry. But it must on no account be supposed that the historical painter is to limit himself to the mere part of an historian, and be contented with the same kind of truth that, above all other, is required in history. We again repeat that the spirit, and not the letter, of that truth is the only proper object of his imitation.

Let it not be forgotten that what is here termed composition, in conformity with customary language, should rather, in compliance with the tenor