effect, is indeed always combined with the details, or what our theoretical reasoner would designate as _littleness_ in nature: and so it ought to be in art, as far as art can follow nature with prudence and profit. What is the fault of Denner’s style? It is, that he does _not_ give this combination of properties: that he gives only one view of nature, that he abstracts the details, the finishing, the curiosities of natural appearances from the general result, truth and character of the whole, and in finishing every part with elaborate care, totally loses sight of the more important and striking appearance of the object as it presents itself to us in nature. He gives every part of a face; but the shape, the expression, the light and shade of the whole is wrong, and as far as can be from what is natural. He gives an infinite variety of tints, but they are not the tints of the human face, nor are they subjected to any principle of light and shade. He is different from Rembrandt or Titian. The English school, formed on Sir Joshua’s theory, give neither the finishing of the parts nor the effect of the whole, but an inexplicable dumb mass without distinction or meaning. They do not do as Denner did, and think that not to do as he did is to do as Titian and Rembrandt did; I do not know whether they would take it as a compliment to be supposed to imitate nature. Some few artists, it must be said, have ‘of late reformed this indifferently among us! Oh! let them reform it altogether!’ I have no doubt they would if they could; but I have some doubts whether they can or not.—Before I proceed to consider the question of beauty and grandeur as it relates to the selection of form, I will quote a few passages from Sir Joshua with reference to what has been said on the imitation of particular objects. In the Third Discourse he observes, ‘I will now add that nature herself is not to be too closely copied.... A mere copier of nature _can never produce any thing great; can never raise and enlarge the conceptions, or warm the heart of the spectator_. The wish of the genuine painter must be more extensive: instead of endeavouring to amuse mankind with the minute neatness of his imitations, he must endeavour to improve them by the grandeur of his ideas; instead of seeking praise by deceiving the superficial sense of the spectator, he must strive for fame by captivating the imagination.’—Vol. I. p. 53. From this passage it would surely seem that there was nothing in nature but minute neatness and superficial effect: nothing great in _her_ style, for an imitator of it can produce nothing great; nothing ‘to enlarge the conceptions or warm the heart of the spectator.’ ‘What word hath passed thy lips, Adam severe?’