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great point gained: the propriety or poffibility of reducing them to practice may be an object of future, and, I truft,' of amicable difcuffion. The trial as yet has never fairly been made; if it fhould be, I am perfuaded it will be found, that the affinity between the principles of painting and of improving is much clofer than you feem willing to allow; and that the application of thofe principles, particularly with respect to water, will produce varieties and effects, which will fhame the cold monotony of Mr. Brown's works.

The "new system of improvement" you have taken the trouble of forming for me, together with the farcaftic title you have given it, accord but ill with the approbayou had just before bestowed, and that in fo flattering a manner, on my general principles. As little does the confequence of that fyftem accord with my ideas of improve

tion

improvement; for there is fo great a pleafure arifing from fine verdure, from neatnefs, from the marks of habitation, of ease, and opulence, that rather than fee this beautiful kingdom one huge, though picturesque, foreft, I should almost hesitate (had I the choice) whether I might not even prefer its being finished by Mr. Brown; and that, for a lover of pictures, and whose palate, as you afterwards observe, requires a degree of irritation, is going a great length.*

It seems to me that your principal aim through the whole of this Letter, is to

* An anecdote I heard fome years ago of Mr. Quin, and which I believe is not fo much hackneyed as many others, seems to me not inapplicable. When grown old, and quite broken down, he one day crawled out to fun himself on the South Parade. A conceited young fellow skipping up to him, cried out, "Mr. Quin! I am forry to see you look fo old and infirm; now what would you give to be as young, and as active, and as full of fpirits as I am!" Quin looked at him very fternly; "Young man," faid he, "I would bid very high indeed-I think I could be content to be as foolish."

fhew,

shew, that by an attention to pictures, and to the method of study pursued by painters, only wild and unpolished ideas are acquired. I cannot but wonder, that a person whose talents for drawing might have led him to form a more just opinion on the subject, fhould have conceived that the study of an art, which has been employed in tracing whatever is most beautiful and elegant, as well as what is wild and romantic, fhould convert its admirers into fo many Cherokees, and make them lofe all relish but for what is favage and uncultivated. I will beg you to reflect on what some of the highest artists have done both in their pictures and drawings, and on the character of their productions; you must be fenfible that the mixture of gay and highly cultivated nature, with the most splendid and finished works of art in Claude Lorrain-the ftudied and uniform grandeur of the landscapes of N. Pouffin,

D

the

the style of his compofitions, fometimes approaching to formality, but from that very circumstance deriving a folemn dignity,-are both of them (and many other examples might be given) as diftinct from the wildness of mere foreft fcenery, as they are from the tameness of Mr. Brown's performances. Many painters, it is true, did principally study the wild and unpolifhed parts of nature; and from this circumftance, and from my having mentioned in my Effay the effects of neglect and accident, together with the ufe which all painters had made, and improvers might make of those effects, you have formed a Syftem for me; and have called it “the new

System of improving by neglect and acci"dent." You will, perhaps, be surprised if I fhould fhew, in the courfe of this Letter, that you have been trying to ridicule (and very undeservedly) your own practice, while you thought you were laughing at

mine.

mine. Had you confidered what I have written, with the attention which every man ought to give to what he means to criticife, and candidly taken the spirit of it, you must have felt that I never could propofe so prepofterous a plan as you appear to have formed for me; that I never could mean that the improver should abandon all design, and leave every thing to chance (the idea you clearly intend to convey by the new fyftem of improving

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by neglect and accident,") but that by studying the effects which had been produced by them, he fhould learn how to defign; that is, how to produce fimilar effects, with as great a degree of certainty as the cafe will admit of, for ftill a great deal muft, and ought to be, left to accident.*

This

* I was ftruck with a paffage I read lately in Helvetius, which illuftrates this idea, by fhewing its application to a higher purpose. "Le hazard a, et il aura donc toujours part a notre education, et furtout a celle des hommes de genie. En

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