ers with heads of men and
bodies of beasts), and in his occasional delineations of the human
character and form in their utmost, or heroic, strength and beauty. We
gather then on the whole, that a painter in the Great Style must be
enthusiastic, or full of emotion, and must paint the human form in its
utmost strength and beauty, and perhaps certain impossible forms
besides, liable by persons not in an equally enthusiastic state of
mind to be looked upon as in some degree absurd. This I presume to be
Reynolds's meaning, and to be all that he intends us to gather from
his comparison of the Great Style with the writings of Homer. But if
that comparison be a just one in all respects, surely two other
corollaries ought to be drawn from it, namely,--first, that these
Heroic or Impossible images are to be mingled with others very
unheroic and very possible; and, secondly, that in the representation
of the Heroic or Impossible forms, the greatest care must be taken in
_finishing the details_, so that a painter must not be satisfied with
painting well the countenance and the body of his hero, but ought to
spend the greatest part of his time (as Homer the greatest number of
verses) in elaborating the sculptured pattern on his shield.

Let us, however, proceed with our paper.

"One may very safely recommend a little more enthusiasm to the modern
Painters; too much is certainly not the vice of the present age. The
Italians seem to have been continually declining in this respect, from
the time of Michael Angelo to that of Carlo Maratti,[44] and from
thence to the very bathos of insipidity to which they are now sunk; so
that there is no need of remarking, that where I mentioned the Italian
painters in opposition to the Dutch, I mean not the moderns, but the
heads of the old Roman and Bolognian schools; nor did I mean to
include, in my idea of an Italian painter, the Venetian school, _which
may be said to be the Dutch part of the Italian genius_. I have only
to add a word of advice to the Painters,--that, however excellent they
may be in painting naturally, they would not flatter themselves very
much upon it; and to the Connoisseurs, that when they see a cat or a
fiddle painted so finely, that, as the phrase is, it looks as if you
could take it up, they would not for that reason immediately compare
the Painter to Raffaelle and Michael Angelo."

In this passage there are four points chiefly to be remarked. The
first, that in the yea