whole year in taking even a
transient view of them; and, after all, some of them would have been
overlooked. The most celebrated pieces, however, I have seen; and
therefore my curiosity is satisfied. Perhaps, if I had the nice
discernment and delicate sensibility of a true connoisseur, this
superficial glimpse would have served only to whet my appetite, and to
detain me the whole winter at Rome. In my progress through the Vatican,
I was much pleased with the School of Athens, by Raphael, a piece which
hath suffered from the dampness of the air. The four boys attending to
the demonstration of the mathematician are admirably varied in the
expression. Mr. Webb's criticism on this artist is certainly just. He
was perhaps the best ethic painter that ever the world produced. No man
ever expressed the sentiments so happily, in visage, attitude, and
gesture: but he seems to have had too much phlegm to strike off the
grand passions, or reach the sublime parts of painting. He has the
serenity of Virgil, but wants the fire of Homer. There is nothing in
his Parnassus which struck me, but the ludicrous impropriety of
Apollo's playing upon a fiddle, for the entertainment of the nine
muses. [Upon better information I must retract this censure; in as
much, as I find there was really a Musical Instrument among the
antients of this Figure, as appears by a small statue in Bronze, to be
still seen in the Florentine Collection.]

The Last Judgment, by Buonaroti, in the chapel of Sixtus IV. produced
to my eye the same sort of confusion, that perplexes my ear at a grand
concert, consisting of a great variety of instruments: or rather, when
a number of people are talking all at once. I was pleased with the
strength of expression, exhibited in single figures, and separate
groupes: but, the whole together is a mere mob, without subordination,
keeping, or repose. A painter ought to avoid all subjects that require
a multiplicity of groupes and figures; because it is not in the power
of that art to unite a great number in one point of view, so as to
maintain that dependence which they ought to have upon one another.
Michael Angelo, with all his skill in anatomy, his correctness of
design, his grand composition, his fire, and force of expression, seems
to have had very little idea of grace. One would imagine he had chosen
his kings, heroes, cardinals, and prelates, from among the facchini of
Rome: that he really drew his Jesus on the Cross, from th