shade with a misty outline,
so broken that it is not easy to find its boundary; and what far off may
perhaps be a man's face, near, is only a piece of thin brown color,
enclosed by a single flowing wave of a brush loaded with white, while
three brown touches across one edge of it, ten feet away, become a mouth
and eyes. The more subtle the power of the artist, the more curious the
difference will be between the apparent means and the effect produced;
and one of the most sublime feelings connected with art consists in the
perception of this very strangeness, and in a sympathy with the
foreseeing and foreordaining power of the artist. In Turner, Tintoret,
and Paul Veronese, the intenseness of perception, first, as to what is
to be done, and then, of the means of doing it, is so colossal, that I
always feel in the presence of their pictures just as other people would
in that of a supernatural being. Common talkers use the word "magic" of
a great painter's power without knowing what they mean by it. They mean
a great truth. That power _is_ magical; so magical, that, well
understood, no enchanter's work could be more miraculous or more
_appalling_; and though I am not often kept from saying things by
timidity, I should be afraid of offending the reader, if I were to
define to him accurately the kind and the degree of awe, with which I
have stood before Tintoret's Adoration of the Magi, at Venice, and
Veronese's Marriage in Cana, in the Louvre.

Sec. 16. It will now, I hope, be understood how easy it is for dull artists
to mistake the mystery of great masters for carelessness, and their
subtle concealment of intention for want of intention. For one person
who can perceive the delicacy, invention, and veracity of Tintoret or
Reynolds[30] there are thousands who can perceive the dash of the brush
and the confusion of the color. They suppose that the merit consists in
dash and confusion, and that they may easily rival Reynolds by being
unintelligible, and Tintoret by being impetuous. But I assure them, very
seriously, that obscurity is _not_ always admirable, nor impetuosity
always right; that disorder does not necessarily imply discretion, nor
haste, security. It is sometimes difficult to understand the words of a
deep thinker; but it is equally difficult to understand an idiot; and
young students will find it, on the whole, the best thing they can do to
strive to be _clear_;[31] not affectedly clear, but manfully and firmly.