s publication, how
they should receive a work whose direct tendency was to misguide
them--to mislead them from the path towards the practice of the old
masters, and to confirm artists in the evil practice of mixing varnish
with the oils with which their pigments are ground.

The work was the more insidious, as it professed to take the excellence
of the old masters as the attainable object. We believe that we
satisfactorily showed that M. Merimee was so predisposed in favour of
copal varnish, that in his researches he would make every thing bend,
even the most stubborn facts, and most opposing sense of passages quoted
by him, to that prejudice. We exposed the numerous, we had almost said
wilful, mistranslations from the Latin and Italian--especially the
former--with which the volume abounded. We showed how entirely and
frequently original passages had been distorted from their plain
meaning, as if with a systematic purpose, to uphold a fanciful theory.
We offer a specimen:--The monk Theophilus, who wrote in the tenth
century "De Arte Pingendi," mentions a "Gummi Fornis." This, though M.
Merimee confesses it does not resemble it in consistence, he still will
have to be copal. Theophilus says, "Hoc glutine omnis pictura
_superlinita_ lucida fit et decora, ac omnino durabilis."--"Every
picture _smeared over_ with this gluten becomes lucid and beautiful, and
altogether durable." It might be thought almost impossible to
mistranslate this. But the varnishing over, or smearing over, being a
direct contradiction to the mixing with the pigments, with the view of
rendering it according to the writer's prejudice, the passage is thus
translated--"Pictures _prepared_ with this _varnish_ are brilliant, and
remain without any alteration."

Again, M. Merimee, speaking of M. Tingry, the able professor of
chemistry of Geneva, affects to regret that he did not apply his
scientific knowledge to the practice of the art, in painting pictures.
But the fact is, that the professor does give his attention to the
subject, not only by his experiments on oils and varnishes--the vehicles
of picture painting; but as one who was well acquainted with the nature
of varnishes, he very distinctly warns artists against the practice
which it is M. Merimee's object to establish. The passage is so
important (and the authority of Tingry so undeniable) that we are here
tempted once more to quote it:--

"Some of the English painters, too anxious to receive the