oo small for the scene; and his execution was
likewise too softened. He winds up this part of the subject with a
quotation from Diderot, that "he cannot be manner'd, either in design
or colouring, who imitates nature scrupulously, and that mannerism
comes of the master of the academy, of the school, and of the
Antique," which we very much doubt, for the mannerism is often in the
mind, the peculiar, the autographic character of the painter, which he
stamps even upon nature. Were a Wynantz, and a Claude or Poussin, put
down before the same scene, how different would be their pictures, how
different the vision in the eye of the three! A Claude would see the
distances, a Gaspar Poussin the middle distances and flowing lines,
and Wynantz the docks and thistles. The chapter "on the signatures of
the Masters," will be found useful to collectors. He says that where
there is a false signature it is removed by spirits of wine, and that
is the proof that it is false. He does not draw the inference, that as
spirits of wine destroy the one vehicle and not the other, the old and
original, they must differ.

Another chapter is devoted to "The famous balance composed by De Piles
for estimating the different degrees of merit in the principal
historical painters." This famous balance is a piece of critical
coxcombry with which we never could have tolerable patience. It is an
absurd assumption of superiority in the critic over all the masters
that ever were; as if he alone were able to conceive perfection, to
which no painter has ever been able to advance; that perfection on
which the critic, or rather De Piles, had his eye, is Number 20; that
no Painter has approached it nearer than nineteen. It commences with a
falsehood in supposition, that the critic is above the Painter, or
Art, or the only one really cognisant of it. The fact being quite the
reverse, for _we know nothing that we have not been absolutely taught
by genius_. It is genius that precedes; it is the maker, the worker,
the inventor, who alone sees the step beyond. Did the critic see this
step he would cease to be the critic, and become the maker. He would
become the genius. In the arts, whether of poetry, painting, or music,
we know nothing but what practical genius tells us, shows us, teaches
us; seldom is it, indeed, that the scholar critic comprehends fully
the lessons taught; but to pretend to go before the _masters_, and to
set up a post with his Number 20 marked upon