culty can there be in diftinguishing, whether the airs of the heads be mean or noble; the ftyle of defign, confined, charged, or elegant; whether the proportions be juft or unequal; the carnations, cold or animated? If the colours in a picture be happily difpofed, the general effect will be pleafing; and in proportion to the force of the clear obfcure, the figures and objects will be flat or projecting, or, in other words, more or less like nature. If we confider these points without prejudice, it will, I think, appear, that of all the arts, Painting is the moft natural both in its means and effects. It is the moft direct and immediate address to the fenfes: and this must be the reason, that the beft wri ters ters of antiquity, in treating of other arts, fo frequently borrow their examples and illustrations from this. When I thus make light of the difficulties of Painting, I must be understood to speak of its effects, not of the practice; and yet, even as to this, there are ten painters who have excelled in the mechanick part, for one who has excelled in the ideal. So that the fcarcity of good pictures, arifes not from a difficulty of execution, but from a poverty of invention. Hence it is, that painters of an inferior clafs, have, in their happier hours, ftruck out fome excellent pictures; and fome again are feldom, fuccefsful, except when they work on the ideas of others: Andrea Sacchi is an example of the firft, and Domi nichino nichino of the second. But I am straying from the defign of this Preface, which was, to point out to the younger part of my readers those errors, which tend moft to defeat their knowledge of Painting. I have already named two, the third is, the hafty ambition of diftinguishing the feveral masters. With many, this precedes and often holds the place of all other knowledge; and yet, I will venture to af firm, that where this does not fpring from a nice difcernment of the beauties or imperfections of the picture before us, and thofe too turning chiefly on the compofition and expreffions, it is an idle art, more useful to a picture-merchant, than becoming a man of taste. It cannot be denied, that a fameness of manner in treating treating various fubjects, is a weakness; it is a want of variety, both in the mechanick, and ideal: Yet it is by this very weakness, or fome infignificant particularities in the colouring, fhading, attitudes, or draperies, that we fo readily distinguish the feveral hands. It may be a check on this affectation, to obferve, that among the infinity of painters, there are not, perhaps, a dozen, who are worth ftudying: It is not by little circumstances, that we know a Raphael or Correggio: Their fupe rior talents are their diftinctions. Women of ordinary forms, are marked by the jewels on their necks, or the colours of their clothes; but a D-fs of Gn is fingled out by a preeminence in beauty. There is a fourth error which I would fain defcredit, and then I fhall have done with this unpleafing tafk: I have obferved many to look at pictures, with no other view, than to fhew their accuteness in detecting little errors in drawing, or lapfes of the pencil; thefe do not ftudy Painting to become knowing, but to appear fo. But let them reflect, that there is more true tafte, in drawing forth one latent beauty, than in observing a hundred obvious imperfections: The first proves, that our fpirit co-operates with that of the artift; the second fhews nothing more, than, that we have eyes, and that we use them to very little purpose. If these errors appear in the fame light to my reader, that they do to me, he will fee the neceffity there was, for fome better plan than that which we |