ier against that great enemy to truth
and nature, affectation, which is ever clinging to the pencil, and ready
to drop and poison every thing it touches." Yet that, "when so very
inartificial as to seem to evade the difficulties of art, is a very
suspicious virtue." Sir Joshua dwells much upon this, because he thinks
there is a perpetual tendency in young artists to run into affectation,
and that from the very terms of the precepts offered them. "When a young
artist is first told that his composition and his attitudes must be
contrasted; that he must turn the head contrary to the position of the
body, in order to produce grace and animation; that his outline must be
undulating and swelling, to give grandeur; and that the eye must be
gratified with a variety of colours; when he is told this with certain
animating words of spirit, dignity, energy, greatness of style, and
brilliancy of tints, he becomes suddenly vain of his newly-acquired
knowledge, and never thinks he can carry those rules too far. It is then
that the aid of simplicity ought to be called in to correct the
exuberance of youthful ardour." We may add that hereby, too, is shown
the danger of particular and practical rules; very few of the kind are
to be found in the "Discourses." Indeed the President points out, by
examples from Raffaelle, the good effect of setting aside these
academical rules. We suspect that they are never less wanted than when
they give direction to attitudes and forms of action. He admits that, in
order "to excite attention to the more manly, noble, and dignified
manner," he had perhaps left "an impression too contemptuous of the
ornamental parts of our art." He had, to use his own expression, bent
the bow the contrary way to make it straight. "For this purpose, then,
and to correct excess or neglect of any kind, we may here add, that it
is not enough that a work be learned--it must be pleasing." Pretty much
as Horace had said of poetry,

"Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, _dulcia_ sunto."

To which maxim the Latin poet has unconsciously given the grace of
rhyme--

"Et quocunque volent animum auditoris agunto."

He again shows the danger of particular practical rules.--"It is given
as a rule by Fresnoy, that '_the principal figure of a subject must
appear in the midst of the picture, under the principal light, to
distinguish it from the rest._' A painter who should think himself
obliged strictly to follow this rule, would e