words it is nearly impossible for that which is not expressive to be
beautiful, except by mere rhythm or melody, any sacrifice to which is
immediately stigmatized as error. But the beauty of mere language in
painting is not only very attractive and entertaining to the spectator,
but requires for its attainment no small exertion of mind and devotion
of time by the artist. Hence, in art, men have frequently fancied that
they were becoming rhetoricians and poets when they were only learning
to speak melodiously, and the judge has over and over again advanced to
the honor of authors those who were never more than ornamental
writing-masters.

Sec. 7. Instance in the Dutch and early Italian schools.

Most pictures of the Dutch school, for instance, and excepting always
those of Rubens, Vandyke, and Rembrandt, are ostentatious exhibitions of
the artist's power of speech, the clear and vigorous elocution of
useless and senseless words: while the early efforts of Cimabue and
Giotto are the burning messages of prophecy, delivered by the
stammering lips of infants. It is not by ranking the former as more than
mechanics, or the latter as less than artists, that the taste of the
multitude, always awake to the lowest pleasures which art can bestow,
and blunt to the highest, is to be formed or elevated. It must be the
part of the judicious critic carefully to distinguish what is language,
and what is thought, and to rank and praise pictures chiefly for the
latter, considering the former as a totally inferior excellence, and one
which cannot be compared with nor weighed against thought in any way nor
in any degree whatsoever. The picture which has the nobler and more
numerous ideas, however awkwardly expressed, is a greater and a better
picture than that which has the less noble and less numerous ideas,
however beautifully expressed. No weight, nor mass, nor beauty of
execution can outweigh one grain or fragment of thought. Three
penstrokes of Raffaelle are a greater and a better picture than the most
finished work that ever Carlo Dolci polished into inanity. A finished
work of a great artist is only better than its sketch, if the sources of
pleasure belonging to color and realization--valuable in
themselves,--are so employed as to increase the impressiveness of the
thought. But if one atom of thought has vanished, all color, all finish,
all execution, all ornament, are too dearly bought. Nothing but thought
can pay for thought, and