All that is truly grand or excellent is a figment of the imagination, a vapid creation out of nothing, a pure effect of overlooking and scorning the minute neatness of natural objects. This will not do. Again, Sir Joshua lays it down without any qualification that ‘The whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists in being able to get above all singular forms, local customs, peculiarities, and _details_ of every kind.’—Page 58. Yet at p. 82 we find him acknowledging a different opinion. ‘I am very ready to allow’ (he says, in speaking of history-painting) ‘that _some_ circumstances of minuteness and particularity _frequently_ tend to give an air of truth to a piece, and _to interest the spectator in an extraordinary manner_. Such circumstances therefore cannot wholly be rejected: but if there be any thing in the Art which requires peculiar nicety of discernment, it is the disposition of these minute circumstantial parts; which, according to the judgment employed in the choice, become so useful to truth or so injurious to grandeur.’—Page 82. That’s true; but the sweeping clause against ‘all particularities and details of every kind’ is clearly got rid of. The undecided state of Sir Joshua’s feelings on this subject of the incompatibility between the whole and the details is strikingly manifested in two short passages which follow each other in the space of two pages. Speaking of some pictures of Paul Veronese and Rubens as distinguished by the dexterity and the unity of style displayed in them, he adds— ‘It is by this and this alone, that the mechanical power is ennobled, and raised much above its natural rank. And it appears to me, that with propriety it acquires this character, as an instance of that superiority with which mind predominates over matter, by contracting into one whole what nature has made multifarious.’—Vol. II. p. 63. This would imply that the principle of unity and integrity is only in the mind, and that nature is a heap of disjointed, disconnected particulars, a chaos of points and atoms. In the very next page, the following sentence occurs— ‘As painting is an art, they’ (the ignorant) ‘think they ought to be pleased in proportion as they see that art ostentatiously displayed; they will from this supposition prefer neatness, high finishing, and gaudy colouring, to the truth, simplicity and _unity_ of nature.’