d, is largeness and general
effect. The following puts the truth clearly. "Perhaps nothing that we
can say will so clearly show the advantage and excellence of this
faculty, as that it confers the character of genius on works that
pretend to no other merit, in which is neither expression, character,
nor dignity, and where none are interested in the subject. We cannot
refuse the character of genius to the 'Marriage' of Paolo Veronese,
without opposing the general sense of mankind, (great authorities have
called it the triumph of painting,) or to the Altar of St Augustine at
Antwerp, by Rubens, which equally deserves that title, and for the same
reason. Neither of these pictures have any interesting story to support
them. That of Paolo Veronese is only a representation of a great
concourse of people at a dinner; and the subject of Rubens, if it may be
called a subject where nothing is doing, is an assembly of various
saints that lived in different ages. The whole excellence of those
pictures consists in mechanical dexterity, working, however, under the
influence of that comprehensive faculty which I have so often
mentioned."

The power of _a whole_ is exemplified by the anecdote of a child going
through a gallery of old portraits. She paid very little attention to
the finishing, or naturalness of drapery, but put herself at once to
mimic the awkward attitudes. "The censure of nature uninformed, fastened
upon the greatest fault that could be in a picture, because it related
to the character and management of the whole." What he would condemn is
that substitute for deep and proper study, which is to enable the
painter to conceive and execute every subject as a whole, and a finish
which Cowley calls "laborious effects of idleness." He concludes this
Discourse with some hints on method of study. Many go to Italy to copy
pictures, and derive little advantage. "The great business of study is,
to form a mind adapted and adequate to all times and all occasions, to
which all nature is then laid open, and which may be said to possess the
key of her inexhaustible riches."

Mr Burnet has supplied a plate of the Monk flying from the scene of
murder, in Titian's "Peter Martyr," showing how that great painter could
occasionally adopt the style of Michael Angelo in his forms. In the same
note he observes, that Sir Joshua had forgotten the detail of this
picture, which detail is noticed and praised by Algarotti, for its
minute discrimin