The essence and groundwork of poetry and painting are the same ; for the painter must in mind be a poet, and join to that heavenly gift one not less rare—the gift of a painter's eye; he must have the capacity of selecting and seeing the beautiful, which is as essentially different from the mere quality of vision, as the nature of a musical ear is from the simple power of hearing sounds. it is familiar to every one that we may possess the faculty of hearing in perfection, without having any idea of that acute percep tion of harmony and discord, which constitutes a musical ear, or having the smallest susceptibility to the pleasure it is calculated to convey to those possessed of that talent. The distinction is not less applicable to the eye, although not so readily confessed. We laugh at the expression of extasies, if we ourselves chance not to possess internal proofs of their existence, in the consciousness of the faculty upon which the pleasure depends; yet, in the parallel case of music, we feel little reluctance to give full credit to im pressions, which we either do not participate at all, or only in a very feeble degree. But when superior discernment of the beautiful is the question, the admission implies a certain obtuseness of taste, which few are willing to con fess ; it is not, however, the less true, and what is a singu lar circumstance, a deficiency in the ocular perception of the beautiful not unfrequently exists in minds possessing the highest class of poetical susceptibility. We find men of creative genius, and picturesque imaginations, utterly incapable of that delicate discrimination which is the pe culiar gift of the painter's eye. Yet the object of the poet and the painter is as precisely similar as the images by which they strive to attain it. " There is necessary in both (says Mr. Barry) the same glowing enthusiastic fancy to go in search of materials, and the same cool judgment is necessary in combining them. They collect from the same objects ; and the same result, an abstract picture, must be formed in the mind of each, as they are equally to be addressed to the same passions in the hearer or spec tator. The scope and design of both is to raise ideas in the mind of such great virtues and great actions as are best calculated to move, to delight, and to instruct. In short, according to Simonides's excellent proverb, 'Paint ing is silent poetry,' and poetry is a speaking picture.' These arts, or rather these branches and emanations of the same art, which is design, have, from the nature of the materials they work with, each of them its peculiar advan tages and disadvantages. Nothing can give to poetry that precision of form, and that assemblage of instantaneous re sult, that painting has. On the other hand, poetry, if it loses by the succession of its images in one instance, it gains by it in another ; and it has, besides, the power of dealing out infinite mental combinations, which no form can circumscribe." He might have added this peculiarity, that poetry speaks but one language, whereas painting ad dresses itself with equal success to all nations and in all languages; it requires no translators, no commentaries, no learning, to enable its meaning to be understood ; it is in tended for the peasant as well as the philosopher, convey ing its lessons in the manner of all others the most calcu lated to please and to gratify.
A picture must succeed in stirring the spectator's mind to fill up and supply in the more vivid colours of imagina tion, what the painter has but indicated ; and only indi cated for that express purpose, to rouse the workings of fancy, and engage in his service theirzealous co-operation to complete the impression desired. For in this no small portion of the pleasure consists that an agreeable bias is given to the exercise of imagination; by awakening such thoughts and sentiments in the spectator's breast, so suf fusing his mind with the poetical inspirations of the pain ter, as to lead him to conceive more than the picture ac tually expresses. This is the true sublime of painting,
as expressed by Pliny in his eulogium on the genius of Timanthes, "In unius hujus operibus intelligitur plus semper quam pingitur, et cum sit ars summa, ingcnium tamen ultra artem est." It is the principle by which the merits of a clever sketch are often found superior to a more finished picture, at least to the eyes of those who are sufficiently familiar with such productions, to catch the full meaning from a hint. For the more the mind is freed from the trammels of the hand, the higher it soars. It is in fact from the drawings of the great masters that we have the best opportunity of studying their genius, as separated from dexterity in expressing it ; for the draw ings are the originals of which finished pictures are the copies ; a circumstance in which the sister arts of poetry and painting are widely different. As the poet must finish his picture to make it intelligible, he can omit no part without prejudice to the impression aimed at ; words are his only materials, and the measure must be filled up to constitute poetry : whereas the painter can, by a few lines, convey his thought in its fullest extent, with an energy, grace, and spirit, as likely to suffer by the after finishing and filling up of colour and shade, as to be im proved by it. When the sketch is achieved to a painter's satisfaction, the subject in the material points of inven tion, design, and expression, is fully accomplished, and already in a state to transfer to the spectator's mind all the truth, sublimity, and poetic fire of the painter's fancy. Fully to enjoy and appreciate the painter's merit, the spec tator must, to a certain extent, share his taste. Painting is a delightful but a difficult art, a rare gift, which cannot fail to fascinate every eye, however unlearned or unused to contemplate the works of art; but the full measure of enjoyment to be derived from this source, is a little with in the reach of all, as the capacity to produce it.
We do not mean to say that the acquirements which generate a fine taste in painting are as exclusively the gift of nature as the genius of poetry ; for, though inca pable of being summoned into existence at our pleasure, they are of a nature to admit of infinite improvement by study, and in all cases require its aid. But study must have the support of natural genius; it cannot work out its object alone, as in the pursuits of science ; for taste is no concomitant of talent in general; they may meet, and, when they do, they result in the production of those rare and brilliant geniuses who have been the admiration of the world. But, as we have observed above, we as fre quently find men of superior acquirments in every branch of science, even of acute perception in the peculiar re gion of the painter's genius, and producing works that abound in the most delicately and beautifully portrayed pictures of nature as presented to the imagination, yet singularly insensible to the beauties of painting, and ut terly unable to discriminate works of merit from those that are absolutely bad. And yet what the poet thus paints to admiration cannot be intuitive; it must have re sulted from a similar observation of the beauties of na ture, which it is equally the province of the painter to exercise; it is difficult, therefore, to conceive why such a person should be precluded from the full enjoyment of what the successful imitation of the beauties of nature by painting is calculated to afford. He can dream the picturesque, although he is insensible to its representa tion.