rry and confusion of a battle.
Poussin's own conduct in his representations of Bacchanalian triumphs and
sacrifices, makes us more easily give credit to this report, since in
such subjects, as well indeed as in many others, it was too much his own
practice. The best apology we can make for this conduct is what proceeds
from the association of our ideas, the prejudice we have in favour of
antiquity. Poussin's works, as I have formerly observed, have very much
the air of the ancient manner of painting, in which there are not the
least traces to make us think that what we call the keeping, the
composition of light and shade, or distribution of the work into masses,
claimed any part of their attention. But surely whatever apology we may
find out for this neglect, it ought to be ranked among the defects of
Poussin, as well as of the antique paintings; and the moderns have a
right to that praise which is their due, for having given so pleasing an
addition to the splendour of the art.

Perhaps no apology ought to be received for offences committed against
the vehicle (whether it be the organ of seeing or of hearing) by which
our pleasures are conveyed to the mind. We must take the same care that
the eye be not perplexed and distracted by a confusion of equal parts, or
equal lights, as of offending it by an unharmonious mixture of colours.
We may venture to be more confident of the truth of this observation,
since we find that Shakespeare, on a parallel occasion, has made Hamlet
recommend to the players a precept of the same kind, never to offend the
ear by harsh sounds:--"In the very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of
your passions," says he, "you must beget a temperance that may give it
smoothness." And yet, at the same time, he very justly observes, "The
end of playing, both at the first and now, is to hold, as it were, the
mirror up to nature." No one can deny but that violent passions will
naturally emit harsh and disagreeable tones; yet this great poet and
critic thought that this imitation of nature would cost too much, if
purchased at the expense of disagreeable sensations, or, as he expresses
it, of "splitting the ear." The poet and actor, as well as the painter
of genius who is well acquainted with all the variety and sources of
pleasure in the mind and imagination, has little regard or attention to
common nature, or creeping after common sense. By overleaping those
narrow bounds, he more effectually seizes the