had?—That we should never have heard of any of these personages, or only heard of them as instances to prove that nothing great can be done without genius and originality! We are at a loss to conceive where, upon the principle here stated, Hogarth would have found the materials of his Marriage a la Mode? or Rembrandt his Three Trees? or Claude Lorraine his Enchanted Castle, with that one simple figure in the foreground,— ‘Sole sitting by the shores of old romance?’ Or from what but an eye always intent on nature, and brooding over ‘beauty, rendered still more beautiful’ by the exquisite feeling with which it was contemplated, did he borrow his verdant landscapes and his azure skies, the bare sight of which wafts the imagination to Arcadian scenes, ‘thrice happy fields, and groves, and flowery vales,’ breathing perpetual youth and freshness? If Claude had gone out to study on the banks of the Tyber with Sir Joshua’s first precept in his mouth, ‘Individual nature produces little beauty,’ and had returned poring over the second, which is like unto it, ‘You must have no dependence on your own genius,’ the world would have lost one perfect painter.[17] Rubens would have shared the same fate, with all his train of fluttering Cupids, warriors and prancing steeds, panthers and piping Bacchanals, nymphs, fawns and satyrs, if he had not been reserved for ‘the tender mercies’ of the modern French critics, David and his pupils, who think that the Luxembourg gallery ought to be destroyed, to make room for their own execrable performances. Or we should never have seen that fine landscape of his in the Louvre, with a rainbow on one side, the whole face of nature refreshed after the shower, and some shepherds under a group of trees piping to their heedless flocks, if instead of painting what he saw and what he felt to be fine, he had set himself to solve the learned riddle proposed by Sir Joshua, whether _accidents in nature_ should be introduced in landscape, since Claude has rejected them. It is well that genius gets the start of criticism; for if these two great landscape painters, not being privileged to consult their own taste and inclinations, had been compelled to wait till the rules of criticism had decided the preference between their different styles, instead of having both, we should have had neither. The folly of all such comparisons consists in supposing that we are reduced to a single alternative in our choice of excellence, and the true answer to the question, ‘Which do you like best, Rubens’s landscapes or Claude’s?’ is the one which was given on another occasion—both. If it be meant which of the two an artist should imitate, the answer is, the one which he is likely to imitate best. As to Rembrandt, he would not have stood the least chance with this new theory of art. But the warning sounds, ‘you must have no dependence on your own genius,’ never reached him in the little study