or
the wind.'

Further, what is meant by perfection in mechanical exercises is
the performing certain feats to a uniform nicety, that is, in fact,
undertaking no more than you can perform. You task yourself, the limit
you fix is optional, and no more than human industry and skill can
attain to; but you have no abstract, independent standard of difficulty
or excellence (other than the extent of your own powers). Thus he who
can keep up four brass balls does this _to perfection_; but he cannot
keep up five at the same instant, and would fail every time he attempted
it. That is, the mechanical performer undertakes to emulate himself, not
to equal another.(2) But the artist undertakes to imitate another, or to
do what Nature has done, and this it appears is more difficult, viz.
to copy what she has set before us in the face of nature or 'human face
divine,' entire and without a blemish, than to keep up four brass balls
at the same instant, for the one is done by the power of human skill
and industry, and the other never was nor will be. Upon the whole,
therefore, I have more respect for Reynolds than I have for Richer; for,
happen how it will, there have been more people in the world who could
dance on a rope like the one than who could paint like Sir Joshua. The
latter was but a bungler in his profession to the other, it is true; but
then he had a harder taskmaster to obey, whose will was more wayward and
obscure, and whose instructions it was more difficult to practise.
You can put a child apprentice to a tumbler or rope-dancer with a
comfortable prospect of success, if they are but sound of wind and limb;
but you cannot do the same thing in painting. The odds are a million to
one. You may make indeed as many Haydons and H----s as you put into that
sort of machine, but not one Reynolds amongst them all, with his grace,
his grandeur, his blandness of gusto, 'in tones and gestures hit,'
unless you could make the man over again. To snatch this grace beyond
the reach of art is then the height of art--where fine art begins,
and where mechanical skill ends. The soft suffusion of the soul, the
speechless breathing eloquence, the looks 'commercing with the skies,'
the ever-shifting forms of an eternal principle, that which is seen but
for a moment, but dwells in the heart always, and is only seized as
it passes by strong and secret sympathy, must be taught by nature
and genius, not by rules or study. It is suggested by feeling, n