faults of genius are more readily adopted than their
excellences; they are more vulgarly perceptible, and more easy
of imitation. We have, therefore, less hesitation in referring
the more ambitious of our artists to this prohibition in Sir
Joshua's Discourse. The greater the authority the more
injurious the delinquency. We therefore adduce as examples,
works of our most inventive and able artist, his "Macbeth" and
his "Hamlet"--they are greatly overloaded with the faults of
superabundance of ornament, and want unity; yet are they works
of great power, and such as none but a painter of high genius
could conceive or execute. In a more fanciful subject, and
where ornament was more admissible, he has been more fortunate,
and even in the multiplicity of his figures and ornaments, by
their grouping and management, he has preserved a seeming
moderation, and has so ordered his composition that the
wholeness, the simplicity, of his subject is not destroyed. The
story is told, and admirably--as Sir Joshua says, "at one
blow." We speak of his "Sleeping Beauty." We see at once that
the prince and princess are the principal, and they are united
by that light and fainter fairy chain intimating, yet not too
prominently, the magic under whose working and whose light the
whole scene is; nothing can be better conceived than the
prince--there is a largeness in the manner, a breadth in the
execution of the figure that considerably dignifies the story,
and makes him, the principal, a proper index of it. The many
groups are all episodes, beautiful in themselves, and in no way
injure the simplicity. There is novelty, variety, and contrast
in not undue proportion, because that simplicity is preserved.
Even the colouring, (though there is too much white,) and
chiaro-scuro, with its gorgeousness, is in the stillness of
repose, and a sunny repose, too, befitting the "Sleeping
Beauty." Mr Maclise has succeeded best where his difficulty and
danger were greatest, and so it ever is with genius. It is not
in such subjects alone that our artists transgress Sir Joshua's
rule; we too often see portraits where the dress and
accessaries obtrude--there is too much lace and too little
expression--and our painters of views follow the fashion most
unaccountably--ornament i