A man of very ordinary talents may become a pleasing painter, but not only all the excellencies of the poet, as well as the painter, must be united to form the great mas ter, but likewise that address in dexterously embodying the conceptions of his genius, which can be expected to result from assiduity alone. The hand must readily, and with truth and precision, present the images of the mind ; which is an acquirement that can only be attained by pain ful labour. Without it, every effort of genius becomes paralyzed, and unable to quit the mind that gave it birth. The poet may start into excellence by inspiration, but the painter must toil to lent' the language of his art, and to obtain the means of expressing his conceptions. Often exposed to witness the failure and disappointment of his greatest efforts—to languish in the hopeless imprisonment with which the innumerable difficulties of the art fetter aspiring gcnius—conscious how much every attempt he makes, falls short of the idea conceived ; he sits down in despair, to bewail the deficiency of nature, in denying the power to execute what the mind can so successfully con ceive. But the accusation is misapplied; nature is not defective, but generally yields to a well-directed and per severing application, which is the price of perfection in most arts, but particularly in that of the painter; who, without dexterity of hand, labours like a person bound down by an incubus—an eagle whose wings refuse their office; or, as Dr. Franklin somewhere humorously oh serves, "his talent becomes as unserviceable as the odd half of a pair of scissars." In fact, a fine touch is the pro duce of much labour and constant practice; and, when ac quired, is such that it ceases to be an effort ; the hand un consciously traces with beauty and elegance; and even in some degree it becomes itself the source of beauties, by suggesting forms and elegances in its casual exercise, which the mind did not conceive. Assiduity is therefore indispensable. " Nulla dies sine linca," is an adage well known to painters. By the same assiduity in observa tion, the eye will augment its powers in a surprising de gree.
And as it seldom happens that the happiest work of a painter does justice to the conception of the mind, he must add an assiduous application in practice to the constant exercise of his eye upon the best models both in nature and art; and in that particular line of practice which ma ture deliberation shall have proved to him to he the hest suited to his talents; for many a failure has resulted, after a life of great application, from having set out upon a bad or unsuitable road. Moreover, it is a journey that must be travelled in youth, when the organs arc flexible, and before erroneous impressions have established their seat. The rare phenomenon of a great painter does not perhaps arise so much from nature being chary of the gift, as the necessity of so many fortunate circumstances to concur in one case, with the disposition to give them life and strength by unwearied application. In youth, our organs possess that boundless docility, so admirably ordered by nature for the wisest purposes, so that few attainments seem impossible to our early and well directed efforts. It
is the particular line into which a painter is to direct his study, that constitutes the great difficulty of choice. here is the embarrassment generally resolved by accident, and is generally proving the rock on which the promise of ge nius is wrecked. The germ of an historical painter is forced to grow up and bear the fruits of landscape, be cause, perhaps, in the outset, a landscape happened to engage his emulation; he goes on labouring in a path he was never intended to tread, and neglecting that which might have led him to eminence. It is a commendable feeling, no doubt, which excites us to strive in the highest class, whether appropriate or not ; but how superior is it to reach excellence in a lower walk, than to slave on in the inferior degrees of a higher one ! The misfortune is, that the failure of our misapplied efforts may easily be mis taken for those difficulties which it becomes a student's perseverance to strive, with unwearied assiduity, to over come. He must not shrink because difficulties press on the sprieg of his energy; it is pressure which calls its strength into action, as success and admiration is the food provided for its reward; for a painter depends much on the encouragement arising from the taste of the times. Accordingly, in those dark ages which intervened between the decline of painting (as of every thing else) at the down fall of the Roman empire, and the subsequent revival of letters, it is impossible to suppose that nature suspended the usual supply of talent ; she doubtless peopled that pe riod with great men as profusely as any other; but the spring was withdrawn, the seed fell on a bad soil, there were none to cultivate, and as few to reward, the struggles of genius, which might as well not have existed.
We propose, in the discussion of this subject, shortly to trace the origin and ancient history of painting ; an in quiry which is of considerable interest and amusement, from the degree of excellence to which, at a very early period, there is little doubt of its having attained ; although the perishable nature of its evidence, joined to the remote antiquity, have left but slender traces to guide our re search. We shall inquire into the state of decay, and nearly of extinction, into which painting had fallen for so many centuries; its subsequent revival when the light of literature began again to dawn upon the long night of the dark ages ; its progress in modern times, with an account of the different more celebrated schools of painting; the state of the art in the present times, with some observa tions on its principles, and the probable causes which in• fluence its rise and decay. So much has been written on the biography of the celebrated painters, both ancient and modern, that we do not propose to extend our observations on that subject, farther than what the consideration of the art itself, in its different states of excellence, may render unavoidable.