under the idea of
rendering the work in any wise systematic or complete, but to supply
gross omissions, answer inevitable objections, and give some substance
to passages of mere declamation.

Whatever inadequacy or error there may be, throughout, in materials or
modes of demonstration, I have no doubt of the truth and necessity of
the main result; and though the reader may, perhaps, find me frequently
hereafter showing other and better grounds for what is here affirmed,
yet the point and bearing of the book, its determined depreciation of
Claude, Salvator, Gaspar, and Canaletto, and its equally determined
support of Turner as the greatest of all landscape painters, and of
Turner's recent works as his finest, are good and right; and if the
prevalence throughout of attack and eulogium be found irksome or
offensive, let it be remembered that my object thus far has not been
either the establishment or the teaching of any principles of art, but
the vindication, most necessary to the prosperity of our present
schools, of the uncomprehended rank of their greatest artist, and the
diminution, equally necessary as I think to the prosperity of our
schools, of the unadvised admiration of the landscape of the seventeenth
century. For I believe it to be almost impossible to state in terms
sufficiently serious and severe the depth and extent of the evil which
has resulted (and that not in art alone, but in all other matters with
which the contemplative faculties are concerned) from the works of those
elder men. On the continent all landscape art has been utterly
annihilated by them, and with it all sense of the power of nature. We in
England have only done better because our artists have had strength of
mind enough to form a school withdrawn from their influence.

These points are somewhat farther developed in the general sketch of
ancient and modern landscape, which I have added to the first section of
the second part. Some important additions have also been made to the
chapters on the painting of sea. Throughout the rest of the text, though
something is withdrawn, little is changed; and the reader may rest
assured that if I were now to bestow on this feeble essay the careful
revision which it much needs, but little deserves, it would not be to
alter its tendencies, or modify its conclusions, but to prevent
indignation from appearing virulence on the one side, and enthusiasm
partisanship on the other.

PREFA