at they can
never be the source of a fresh and natural inspiration, and that neither
artist nor spectator can be moved by cold and vapid allegories in an
extinct dialect? If Diderot could have seen such a treatment of La
Grenee's subject as Landseer's _Peace_, with its children playing at the
mouth of the slumbering gun, he would have been the first to cry out how
much nearer this came to the spirit of his own aesthetic methods, than
all the pride of Mars and all the beauty of Venus. He is truer to
himself in the subject with which he met Greuze's perplexity in the
second of his two illustrations. He bade Greuze paint the Honest Model;
a girl sitting to an artist for the first time, her poor garments on the
ground beside her; her head resting on one of her hands, and a tear
rolling down each cheek. The mother, whose dress betrays the extremity
of indigence, is by her side, and with her own hands and one of the
hands of her daughter covers her face. The painter, witness of the
scene, softened and touched, lets his palette or his brush fall from his
hand. Greuze at once exclaimed that he saw his subject; and we may at
least admit that this pretty bit of commonplace sentimentalism is more
in Diderot's vein than pagan gods and goddesses.

[48] Quoted in Diderot's _Oeuv._, v. 460, _n._

[49] E.g. _Oeuv._, xi. 258.

[50] xi. 74.

Diderot is never more truly himself than when he takes the subject of a
picture that is before him, and shows how it might have been more
effectively handled. Thus:

"The Flight into Egypt is treated in a fresh and piquant manner.
But the painter has not known how to make the best of his idea. The
Virgin passes in the background of the picture, bearing the infant
Jesus in her arms. She is followed by Joseph and the ass carrying
the baggage. In the foreground are the shepherds prostrating
themselves, their hands upturned towards her, and wishing her a
happy journey. Ah, what a fine painting, if the artist had known
how to make mountains at the foot of which the Virgin had passed;
if he had known how to make the mountains very steep, escarped,
majestic; if he had covered them with moss and wild shrubs; if he
had given to the Virgin simplicity, beauty, grandeur, nobleness; if
the road that she follows had led into the paths of some forest,
lonely and remote; if he had taken his moment at the rise of day,
or at its fa