amented; and missed a Cardinal's hat only by dying a
few months too soon; but was particularly esteemed and favoured by two
Popes, the only ones who filled the chair of St. Peter in his time, and
as great men as ever sat there since that apostle, if at least he ever
did: one, in short, who could have been a Leonardo, a Michael Angelo,
a Titian, a Correggio, a Parmegiano, an Annibal, a Rubens, or any other
whom he pleased, but none of them could ever have been a Raffaelle.'

The same writer speaks feelingly of the change in the style of different
artists from their change of fortune, and as the circumstances are
little known I will quote the passage relating to two of them:--

'Guido Reni, from a prince-like affluence of fortune (the just reward of
his angelic works), fell to a condition like that of a hired servant
to one who supplied him with money for what he did at a fixed rate; and
that by his being bewitched by a passion for gaming, whereby he lost
vast sums of money; and even what he got in his state of servitude
by day, he commonly lost at night: nor could he ever be cured of this
cursed madness. Those of his works, therefore, which he did in this
unhappy part of his life may easily be conceived to be in a different
style to what he did before, which in some things, that is, in the airs
of his heads (in the gracious kind) had a delicacy in them peculiar to
himself, and almost more than human. But I must not multiply instance
variation, and all the degrees of goodness, from the lowest of the
indifferent up to the sublime. I can produce evident proofs of this
in so easy a gradation, that one cannot deny but that he that did this
might do that, and very probably did so; and thus one may ascend and
descend, like the angels on Jacob's ladder, whose foot was upon the
earth, but its top reached to Heaven.

'And this great man had his unlucky circumstance. He became mad after
the philosopher's stone, and did but very little in painting or drawing
afterwards. Judge what that was, and whether there was not an alteration
of style from what he had done before this devil possessed him. His
creditors endeavoured to exorcise him, and did him some good, for he
set himself to work again in his own way; but if a drawing I have of a
Lucretia be that he made for his last picture, as it probably is (Vasari
says that was the subject of it), it is an evident proof of his decay;
it is good indeed, but it wants much of the delicacy whic