CIRCUMSPECTION REQUIRED IN ENDEAVOURING TO UNITE CONTRARY EXCELLENCIES.--THE EXPRESSION OF A MIXED PASSION NOT TO BE ATTEMPTED.--EXAMPLES OF THOSE WHO EXCELLED IN THE GREAT STYLE.--RAFFAELLE, MICHEL ANGELO, THOSE TWO EXTRAORDINARY MEN COMPARED WITH EACH OTHER.--THE CHARACTERISTICAL STYLE.--SALVATOR ROSA MENTIONED AS AN EXAMPLE OF THAT STYLE; AND OPPOSED TO CARLO MARATTI.--SKETCH OF THE CHARACTERS OF POUSSIN AND RUBENS.--THESE TWO PAINTERS ENTIRELY DISSIMILAR, BUT CONSISTENT WITH THEMSELVES.--THIS CONSISTENCY REQUIRED IN ALL PARTS OF THE ART. I purpose to carry on in this discourse the subject which I began in my last. It was my wish upon that occasion to incite you to pursue the higher excellencies of the art. But I fear that in this particular I have been misunderstood. Some are ready to imagine, when any of their favourite acquirements in the art are properly classed, that they are utterly disgraced. This is a very great mistake: nothing has its proper lustre but in its proper place. That which is most worthy of esteem in its allotted sphere, becomes an object, not of respect, but of derision, when it is forced into a higher, to which it is not suited; and there it becomes doubly a source of disorder, by occupying a situation which is not natural to it, and by putting down from the first place what is in reality of too much magnitude to become with grace and proportion that subordinate station, to which something of less value would be much better suited. My advice, in a word, is this:--Keep your principal attention fixed upon the higher excellencies. If you compass them, and compass nothing more, you are still in the first class. We may regret the innumerable beauties which you may want; you may be very imperfect: but still you are an imperfect artist of the highest order. If, when you have got thus far, you can add any, or all, of the subordinate qualifications, it is my wish and advice that you should not neglect them. But this is as much a matter of circumspection and caution at least, as of eagerness and pursuit. The mind is apt to be distracted by a multiplicity of objects; and that scale of perfection which I wish always to be preserved, is in the greatest danger of being totally disordered, and even inverted. Some excellencies bear to be united, and are improved by union; others are of a discordant nature; and the attempt to join them only produces a harsh jarring of incongruent principles. The attempt to unite contrary excellencies (of form, for instance) in a single figure can never escape degenerating into the monstrous, but by sinking into the insipid; by taking away its marked character, and weakening its expression. This remark is true to a certain degree with regard to the passions. If you mean to preserve the most perfect beauty _in its most perfect state_, you cannot express the passions, all of which produce distortion and deformity, more or less, in the most beautiful faces.