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admiring, it is for the hand and execution of the workman, and not for the defign of the artist: that our climate is fo distempered, that we difrelish every thing, nay even life itself; that we are naturally and conftitutionally addicted to fuicide; that it is a confequence of the filtration of our nervous juices; that it is in confequence of a north east wind, that our poets cannot arrive at that particular kind of delicacy that fprings from tafte; that they cannot arrive at any true imagery; that they ftrike the car with a great noise, and prefent nothing to the mind; and that our natural capacity for the fine arts, amounts to very little, to nothing at all.

Such is the picture that, in the writings of these philofophifing men, is fhewn about as the exact portrait of the genius of our iflands. Had it been exhibited by a quack or mountebank, there would have been nothing furprifing in it; we might be inclined to laugh at the impofition, and its want of refemblance: but coming as it does from fuch refpectable names as the Abbé du Bos, and the Prefident Montefquieu, we must be more ferious; they have a very deserved reputation in fome branches of real knowledge; and even Abbé Wincleman had undoubtedly a very extenfive reading. It is indeed a humiliating confideration, that learning, instead of contributing to make us think and judge more wifely, does often but furnish us with materials for errors and abfurdities that are below the reasonings and conclufions of common illiterate people: but let us not blame learning for that which may be more justly afcribed to the misuse of it; these writers before us were men of too much enterprize; they imprudently ventured upon difficulties, the folution of which happened to lie out of their way. The nature and extent of their inquiries did not qualify them to enter minutely into the number of little fucceffional ftudies and refearches, upon which the growth and the fpecies of arts depend; being, therefore, unequal to the task of following the natural order of this inquiry, they have (perhaps purpofely) wandered into philofophical and metaphyfical fubtleties, which are calculated rather to perplex the fubject, and plaufibly to conceal the writer's ignorance, than to elucidate and to fatisfy the mind of the reader. It is then no wonder, if their out-of-the-way fyftems and difcourfes fhould fometimes meet with the fame noted cenfure that Hannibal paffed upon a famous orator, upon almost a fimilar occafion: Cicero, in chap. xviii. confer. 2. of his Orator, tells us, that when Hannibal was in his exile at Ephefus, he was perfuaded to go to hear Phormio, the Peripatetic, difcourse upon the duties of a general, and upon the whole fyftem of military affairs, which he did for several hours with great fluency. The rest of the audience, who feemed to be quite ravished, asked Hannibal what he thought of the philofopher; the Carthaginian general (who did not perhaps fpeak good Greck, though he spoke good fenfe) faid that he had occafionally feen many foolish people, but that a greater dotard than that fame Phormio he had never met with before.'

Here we have seen a formidable charge, and fuch an answer to it, as, in our opinion, it deferved. Such, certainly, has been the rage of fpeculation among the modern philofophifing

critics,

critics, and fuch the falfe inductions which, led by an affectation of fingularity or of peculiar penetration, they have created, that public opinion on matters of science and the arts has been infected by them to a degree of delirium. In proof of this we need only take a view of the miferable condition of moral science among us, for the true and fimple principles of which we have been prefented with fhadows. And, with regard to the arts, what critical intruders have we met with, trangers to their practice, their power and economy, from the dignified critic, who, in pruning Cowley *, ftripped him of fome of his fineft branches, to all the fubaltern dealers in French fophiftry and refinement. Yet it is, furely, a prepofterous vanity in thefe critics, that leads them to betray their ignorance on fubjects of which they cannot be masters. Thus the editor of Cowley fpeaks in terms of the higheft admiration of the poet's peculiar happiness in the following line,

"I love the homely littleness of cafe."

He might have spared his praife, had ho known that the line did not belong to Cowley but literally to Marial,

Sordida et in parvis otia rebus amo.

And as these blunders will unavoidably fall othe fhare of unpoetical critics in poetry, fo will they ever attend an undisciplined connoiffeurship in painting. Confedently, what writers of this ftamp have advanced with regard to the capacity of the English for the Arts, is not of the leaft importance.

In his fecond chapter Mr. Barry obferves that the History of the Arts furnisheth the best view of the cause of their rife and perfection; and in the third he gives an extract to that purpose, from Vafari's proem to his Lives of the Painters. This extract is exceedingly curious, and abounds with information; but it is too long for us to adopt, and would fuffer by abridgment.

The fourth chapter fhews that the different ftyles of art in the different schools were not owing to climate but to moral or accidental caufes. This fubject affords the Author a strong collateral argument in support of his general idea, and thus he pursues it:

Art was confiderably advanced in Italy before any difference was visible in the purfuits and ftyles of the different fchools, and then the difference was owing to accident. The first painters of Florence, Venice, &c. were all of them of the fame leaven; although there be better and worfe amongst them, yet the ftyle is the fame, they fet out from the fame point, and were in the fame road; their pictures appear the work of the fame people, and to be taken from the fame objects; they are dry, cold, meagre, and wooden: they improved as they went on, fome faker, fome flower, according as their education and other advantages furnished them with opportunities.

See Review, vol. xlviii. p. 10,

Andrea

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Andrea of Pifa, who flourished fo early as 1337, ftudied the baffo relievo of Meleager and Atalanta, and other antiques, which the people of Pifa had brought from Greece. Afterwards Ghiberti, the Florentine, poffeffed many cafts from the antique. Squarcione, of Padua, alfo had amaffed, in his travels through Greece and other places, a good collection of antique ftatues, relievos, &c. upon which his pupils, of whom he had one hundred and thirty feven, had formed their taste and practice. It is hard to fay what became of all thefe fcholars, but many of them muft furely have diffeminated what they knew about Lombardy; and Andrea Mantagna, one of them, had in all Italy, at that time, no competitor who was fo well ftudied in the antique. On the other hand Maffaccio, the Florentine, born in 1417, was (independent of his other excellencies) the best colourist and most natural painter of the time he lived in. L. da Vinci, and Fra. Bartolomeo, aifo were both Florentines; the former was a most excellent colourist and the actual discoverer of that fine manner of relievo and colouring, which afterwards diftinguished the Venetian school; and Fra. Bartolomeo's colouring is very little inferior to Titian himfelf. But the Florentines, by their very general application to ftatuary, have been more particularly led into the fludy of form, anatomy, and fuch parts of the art as were common to painting and fculpture: and M. Angelo, whofe fuperior skill and power in all the parts of drawing and knowledge of the figure, had fixed the ftyle and taste of his countrymen, was, as all the world knows, a fculptor, and had never made colouring an object of his Atudy.

The Venetian painters who fixed the ftyle of their countrymen were Giorgione and Titian. Giorgione took the hint of that fine manner of colouring which (as we obferved before became the diftinguishing characteristic of the Venetian school) from L. da Vinci, the Florentine; and Titian carried it to the greateft poffible perfection but as Titian adopted this fearch into colouring at an early period of his life (and, comparatively speaking) knew but little of any thing else that might tempt him into other purfuits; he gave up almoft his whole time in improving colouring to the utmost perfection it was capable of receiving: therefore, if Titian is more remarkable as a colourist than as a draftfman, the climate has nothing to do in it. And M. Angelo, like the great and judicious artilt that he was, did not afcribe Titian's excellence at colouring, or his defects in the other parts, to any particular direction of genius which might enable him to fucceed in any one part of the art more than in the others: no, he well knew that the acquifition of art, in the whole together, or in the particular parts and divifions of it, will always, in the hands of a man properly qualified, bear a juít proportion to the application made, and to the advantages of ftudy enjoyed. After praifing Titian's colouring, his remark upon him is: "It is a misfortune that the painters of Venice have not a better manner of study, and that they are not early initiated in the principles of found drawing, for if this man was as much affifted by art and by the principles of defign, as he is by nature, no body could go further or do better, being poffeffed, as he is, with the fineft fpirit, and with a manner very eafy, beautiful, and full of life."

• This

This alone, without any raking up of climates, is fully fuffi cient to account for the merits, demerits, and particular ftyles of individual artists; and also of the collective and national bodies of them.

There is then no occafion to fuppofe that the Venetian painters were impelled to the purfuit of colouring by their air, climate, or their food, or by any particular texture in the fibres of their eyes; or, abfurdly to imagine, that the Bolognese artifts were influenced at one and the fame time by the different climates and mediums of air of Rome, Florence, Venice, and Parma: a je-ne-fçai-quoi would come badly out of the mouth of a philofopher, who it is fuppofed muft and can give reasons for all things; therefore it is that these notions of climate, however vague and loofe, come in very opportunely to raise a learned mift before the eyes of the reader, when the writer's knowledge and information comes fhort of the inquiry; which must, as we have obferved before, be often the cafe, as, generally fpeaking, there is nothing more remote from the investigations of our modish philofophers than the labyrinths of practical art, and the manner and measure of its migration from one place to another.' In the ensuing chapter, the Author makes it ftrongly evident against the opinion and affertion of Du Bos, that the improficiency of the English in the arts, after Hans Holbein and other painters had given them an opportunity of improvement, by vifiting and refiding in their country, was not owing to any defect of genius, but to religious prejudices, which, at the time of the Reformation, profcribed every Popish monument of art. After this, are pointed out fome abuses, which have crept in under the mistaken notion of introducing the arts; and here it is observed, that our importations and numerous fales of pictures can hardly be confidered in any other light, than as a common cloaca and fink, through which all the refuse and filth of Europe is emptied into this country.

The feventh chapter, which confifts of an argument, that the superior style of the Grecian and Italian art, is not owing to any natural fuperiority in the bodily ftructure of those people, is fpirited and ingenious, but lefs adapted to the general fubject. We muft, moreover, enter our protest against the Author's idea, where he obferves, that the colour of our people feems to be in a fort of mediate proportion between the Hollanders and Germans, and the greatest part of the people of Italy and the fouthern parts of France,' and that we are fomewhat between the chalky, fifhy whiteness of the one, and the tawny unvariegated hue of the others.' The painter has in this place, if we may be allowed to judge, by no means been happy in mixing his colours. The coalition of the chalky whiteness with the tawny hue, would but ill exhibit the peachy bloom of an English beauty.

The fucceeding chapters are appropriated to the following fubjects:

Chap.

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Chap. VIII. That the English Imagination and Judgment are capable of the greatest Exertions, exemplified in their Poets. IX. The Disadvantage to fuperior Art in England, in not have ing been taken up whilft the Nation was forming its Character.

X. The Disadvantage to the fmaller Branches in being dif joined from the great Stock of historical Art.

XI. Of the public Encouragement.

XII. Some Errors in the prefent State of Connoiffeurship.
XIII. Temperate Climates the peculiar Theatre of moral In-
fluence.

XIV. On national Tafte, Character, and Manners, and their
Changes in temperate Climates.

XV. The Changes in the Tafte and Character of the Italians,
not to be accounted for by the fuppofed Changes of Climate.
XVI. The Error of the Notion about the Influence of Cli-
mates, exemplified by an Analyfis of the different Styles of

Art.

XVII. The State of Education furnishes the Solution of all thofe difficulties, which many Writers have found fo perplexing.

XVIII. The fame Subject continued.

XIX. Some Obfervations on Religion, fo far as it is connected with the mental Powers.

We shall lay before our Readers the concluding Chapter, which ferves as a corollary to the whole, and from which they will obtain a clear idea of the book :

• From the whole of what has appeared in this inquiry, it is evident, that the rife and perfection of the arts in Italy and Greece, was owing to the co-operation of thofe caufes which are called moral, as contradiftinguished to natural. And that thefe moral caufes not concurring, was the true reason why the genius of the ancient Romans did not, to any degree, exert itself in the arts. We have feen that the introduction and perfection of the arts in France was owing to the concurrence of those causes, and that this fame concurrence of fortunate circumftances was prevented taking effect in England at the fame time, by reason of the accidental religious confufions, and the change that was then brought about. We have also seen that many ages of Greece, Italy, and France, have appeared barren in mental abilities, when thofe moral caufes were wanting: and that the different taftes of the feveral ages of art in the fame country have ever refulted from the different ways in which these moral caufes have been combined, being either good, or bad; limited, or extended; pure or corrupt; according to the temporary modification of this mass. We are then at no lofs for good and fufficient reafons why the people of England have been hitherto fo very backward in the fine arts; and why the Greeks, the Italians, and the French, have been fo much more fuccefsful: the caufes of it lie fairly before us; they are clear, indifputable, and adequate facts, furnished by the histories of thofe countries and of thofe arts; and would, had Rev. Apr. 1775. they

X

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