To return to the proper business of portrait-painting. We mean to speak of it, not as a lucrative profession, nor as an indolent amusement, (for we interfere with no man’s profits or pleasures), but as a _bona fide_ art, the object of which is to exercise the talents of the artist, and to add to the stock of ideas in the public. And in this point of view, we should imagine that that is the best portrait which contains the fullest representation of individual nature. Portrait-painting is the biography of the pencil, and he who gives most of the peculiarities and details, with most of the general character,—that is of _keeping_,—is the best biographer, and the best portrait-painter. What if Boswell (the prince of biographers) had not given us the scene between Wilkes and Johnson at Dilly’s table, or had not introduced the little episode of Goldsmith strutting about in his peach-coloured coat after the success of his play,—should we have had a more perfect idea of the general character of those celebrated persons from the omission of these particulars? Or if Reynolds had not painted the former as ‘_blinking Sam_,’ or had given us such a representation of the latter as we see of some modern poets in some modern magazines, the fame of that painter would have been confined to the circles of fashion,—where they naturally look for the same selection of beauties in a portrait, as of topics in a dedication, or a copy of complimentary verses! It has not been uncommon that portraits of this kind, which professed to admit all the peculiarities, and to heighten all the excellences of a face, have been elevated by ignorance and affectation, to the dignified rank of historical portrait. But in fact they are merely _caricature transposed_: that is, as the caricaturist makes a mouth wider than it really is, so the painter of _flattering likenesses_ (as they are termed) makes it not so wide, by a process just as mechanical, and more insipid. Instead, however, of objecting captiously to common theory or practice, it will perhaps be better to state at once our own conceptions of historical portrait. It consists, then, in seizing the predominant form or expression, and preserving it with truth throughout every part. It is representing the individual under one consistent, probable, and striking view; or shewing the different features, muscles, etc. in one action, and modified by one principle. A face thus painted, is _historical_;—that is, it carries its own internal evidence of truth and nature with it; and the number of individual peculiarities, as long as they are true to nature, cannot lessen, but must add to the general strength of the impression.