the high and low style in nature or in art. Michael Angelo’s figures, we are told, are more than ordinarily grand: why, by the same rule, may not Raphael’s be more than ordinarily beautiful, have more than ordinary softness, symmetry, and grace?—Character and expression are still less included in the present theory. All character is a departure from the common-place form; and Sir Joshua makes no scruple to declare that expression destroys beauty. Thus he says, ‘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.’—Vol. I. p. 118. He goes on—‘Guido, from want of choice in adapting his subject to his ideas and his powers, or from attempting to preserve beauty where it could not be preserved, has in this respect succeeded very ill. His figures are often engaged in subjects that required great expression: yet his Judith and Holofernes, the daughter of Herodias with the Baptist’s head, the Andromeda, and some even of the Mothers of the Innocents, have little more expression than his Venus attired by the Graces.’—_Ibid._ What a censure is this passed upon Guido, and what a condemnation of his own theory, which would reduce and level all that is truly great and praiseworthy in art to this insipid, tasteless standard, by setting aside as illegitimate all that does not come within the middle, central form! Yet Sir Joshua judges of Hogarth as he deviates from this standard, not as he excels in individual character, which he says is only good or tolerable as it partakes of general nature; and he might accuse Michael Angelo and Raphael, the one for his grandeur of style, the other for his expression; for neither are what he sets up as the goal of perfection.—I will just stop to remark here, that Sir Joshua has committed himself very strangely in speaking of the character and expression to be found in the Greek statues. He says in one place— ‘I cannot quit the Apollo, without making one observation on the character of this figure. He is supposed to have just discharged his arrow at the Python; and by the head retreating a little towards the right shoulder, he appears attentive to its effect. What I would remark, is the difference of this attention from that of the Discobolus, who is engaged in the same purpose, watching the effect of his Discus. The graceful, negligent, though animated air of the one, and the vulgar eagerness of the other, furnish an instance of the judgment of the ancient Sculptors _in their nice discrimination of character_. They are both equally true to nature, and equally admirable.’—Vol. II. p. 21. After a few observations on the limited means of the art of Sculpture, and the inattention of the ancients to almost every thing but form, we meet with the following passage:—