¹ Cf. Alexander Gilchrist's Life of William Blake, London, 1880, I., Chap. XXIX., and the notes of Edmund Gosse's Edition of the Discourses, London, 1884.

² The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, etc., 3 Vols., London, 1798, Vol. II., page 113 (Thirteenth Discourse).

³ Pater, Essay on Coleridge, in Appreciations.

⁴ Works, I., 53 (Third Discourse).

⁵ Ibid., I, 204-5 (Seventh Discourse).

⁶ Yet even in the representation of foul or lowly objects it seems to be Sir Joshua's opinion that artistic success is attained not by imitating them in all their ugliness, but by investing them with an air of beauty, by elevating them above the commonplace. “Whether it is the human figure, an animal, or even inanimate objects, there is nothing, however unpromising in appearance, but may be raised into dignity, convey sentiment and produce emotion in the hands of a Painter of genius. What was said of Virgil, that he threw even the dung about the ground with an air of dignity, may be applied to Titian: whatever he touched, however naturally mean and habitually familiar, by a kind of magic he invested with grandeur and importance.” Works, II., 53 (Eleventh Discourse).

⁷ Works, II., 119 (Thirteenth Discourse).

⁸ Ibid., I, 58 (Third Discourse). In this admirable sentence Sir Joshua sums up that part of Aristotle's theory which was most grossly misinterpreted by neo-classical literary critics. Cf. Irving Babbitt's The New Laokoon, pp. 11-12. On the art-criticism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, cf. W. G. Howard's article “Ut Pictura Poesis,” P. M. L. A., XXIV., pp. 40-123. A comparison of the Discourses with the citations in this article shows clearly that Reynolds was following, in a liberal and thoughtful way, a long established tradition of art-criticism. De Piles and Du Fresnoy are mentioned frequently in the Discourses. It is beyond the scope of the present essay to consider further the sources of Sir Joshua Reynolds, but it is plain that his theory of the arts presents little that is new or original, except in application and illustration.

⁹ The quotations are all from the Thirteenth Discourse.

¹⁰ A complete reconcilement between the passages quoted from Reynolds and the doctrine of the Poetics may be found in the fact that to Aristotle a work of art was no photographic reproduction of existing nature, but “an idealized representation of human life—of character, emotion, action—under forms manifest to sense.” S. H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, 4th edition, 1907, p. 153; cf. also p. 122.

¹¹ Cf. J. E. Spingarn, A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, second edition, New York, 1908, p. 85.

¹² Idler, No. 82, Nov. 10, 1759. The three letters to the Idler (Nos. 76, 79, and 82) should be read in connection with the Discourses.

¹³ Works, I., 63-4 (Third Discourse).

¹⁴ Ibid., I., 57-8 (Third Discourse).

¹⁵ Ibid., I., 67 (Third Discourse). In portrait painting, however, the artist should mediate between “the general air of the antique for the sake of dignity” and “something of the modern for the sake of likeness.” (Seventh Discourse.)

¹⁶ Ibid., Fourth Discourse.

¹⁷ Idler, No. 79, Oct. 20, 1759.—It is to be observed that in many places, especially in the Eleventh Discourse, Sir Joshua means by “the general” no more than the total effect or impression of the picture. This total effect, however, is nearly related to his theory of the universal, for this it is which “speaks the general sense of the whole species.” Hazlitt's criticism of Sir Joshua's use of the term will be noted.

¹⁸ Works, I., 110 (Fourth Discourse).

¹⁹ References to Hazlitt's writings will be made to the Collected Works, edited by A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover, 12 vols., London, 1903; citations will be by volume- and page-number merely.—The two most important papers by Hazlitt on aesthetic principles are the article entitled “Fine Arts” contributed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, seventh edition, 1824 (IX., 377), and that entitled “On the Elgin Marbles,” which appeared in the London Magazine for February and May, 1822 (IX., 326). The first-named paper was based upon articles of Hazlitt in the Champion, August to November, 1814. Cf. Collected Works, XI., 208. The articles on the Elgin Marbles were originally written for the Examiner, June 16 and 30, 1816. Cf. IX., 466, and J. Douady's Liste Chronologique des Oeuvres de William Hazlitt, Paris, 1906. The two essays in Table Talk, 1821, (VI., 122-145), “On Certain Inconsistencies in Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses,” were written apparently after a more careful re-reading of the Discourses than Hazlitt had made for the Champion articles; they are perhaps superior in style and cleverness; but they show no essential changes in the point of view. In the 1814 articles there are scarcely any references to Discourses beyond the sixth; in Table Talk references to the later Discourses are frequent. Perhaps he had not read the book through in 1814.

²⁰ Hours in a Library, new ed., n.d., II., 240.

²¹ J. Douady, Vie de William Hazlitt L'Essayiste, Paris, 1907, pp. 353-4.

²² Collected Works, IX., 357-8. Cf. also the essay “On the Ignorance of the Learned,” VI., 70.

²³ IX., 377-8.

²⁴ IX., 379.

²⁵ IX, 405.

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ IX., 339. For the same idea, cf. XI., 229. Cf. this sentence from his literary criticism: “To [Dr. Johnson] an excess of beauty was a fault; for it appeared to him like an excrescence; and his imagination was dazzled by the blaze of light.” (I. 175.)

²⁸ Cf., e.g., W. Bateson, in Chapter V. of Darwin and Modern Science.

²⁹ Cf. B. Bosanquet, A History of Aesthetic, London, 1892, p. 210; Butcher, op. cit., especially 194-7.

³⁰ VI. 131.

³¹ One sentence from the Third Discourse will show the tendency to equate “deformity” with “the particular.” “But the power of discovering what is deformed in Nature, or, in other words, what is particular and uncommon, can be recognized only by experience;” etc.

³² XI., 222. Other inconsistencies are concerned with the distinction between beauty and grandeur (VI. 135, 145), and the question whether precedence should be given to an imperfect artist of the highest order or to a genius in a lower rank of art (VI. 128).

³³ Eleventh Discourse.

³⁴ VI. 130.

³⁵ IX. 328.

³⁶ Thus it seems to me that he almost entirely begs the question of idealization when he says that in the cartoons of Raphael there is hardly a face or figure that is not “fine and individual nature finely disposed.” [Italics mine.] XI. 226.

³⁷ Oxford Lectures on Poetry, London, 1911, p. 29.

³⁸ VII. 385, ff. Cf. also paragraph from “Madame de Staël's Account of German Philosophy and Literature” (XI. 179, last paragraph).

³⁹ Quoted, p. 189 above.

⁴⁰ XI. 228. For a similar admission, cf. the quotation from Barry, IX. 380.

⁴¹ I. 77; cf. IX. 313.

⁴² I. 78.

⁴³ The New Laokoon, p. 128.

⁴⁴ Ibid., p. 124.

⁴⁵ Cf. the passage from Rousseau (Chap. XVI.) cited by Babbitt, p. 123. Cf. also this sentence from the first chapter of Rousseau's Essai: “On voit même que les discours les plus éloquents sont ceux où l'on enchâsse le plus d'images; et les sons n'ont jamais plus d'énergie que quand ils font l'effet des couleurs.”

⁴⁶ IX. 406.—This is, of course, merely a succinct statement of the most important generalization of Lessing in Laokoon. See especially Chapters XVI. and XVII. Hazlitt, who did not read German, had no opportunity to become acquainted with Lessing's work, for the Laokoon was not translated into English until 1836 (by Ross). De Quincey freely translated the first four chapters in Blackwood's for November, 1826. On the early influence of the Laokoon in England, see the preface of Sir Robert Phillimore's translation (London, 1874), pp. xxxii, ff.

⁴⁷ IX. 320-1. (Edinburgh Magazine, December, 1817).

⁴⁸ IX., 352.

⁴⁹ IX., 24.

⁵⁰ IX., 32.

⁵¹ The word impressionism is used, of course, not in its technical meaning, descriptive of a particular technique in painting, but in its usual meaning in literary criticism.

⁵² Ruskin, I believe, refers to Hazlitt only once in Modern Painters (Part II., Sect. III., Chap. 1, sect. 11). Then it is to throw contempt on his abuse of figurative language. Hazlitt had written of a Cuyp, “The tender green of the vallies beyond the gleaming lake, the purple light of the hills, have an effect like the down on an unripe nectarine.” (IX., 19.) Ruskin observes: “I ought to have apologized before now, for not having studied sufficiently in Covent Garden to be provided with terms of correct and classical criticism…Now I dare say that the sky of this first-rate Cuyp is very like an unripe nectarine; all I have to say about it is, that it is exceedingly unlike a sky.”

⁵³ DC. 52.

⁵⁴ Fifth Discourse.

⁵⁵ Seventh Discourse.

⁵⁶ DC. 384.—Sir Joshua, of course, allows great merit to Poussin's landscapes.

⁵⁷ V. 8.

⁵⁸ But Hazlitt did not deny all gradation in fitness or dignity among various subjects. In one of the papers of the Round Table, after admitting the interest, from the standpoint of the painter, attaching to any object in nature, he insists, “The superiority of high art over the common or mechanical consists in combining truth of imitation with beauty and grandeur of subject.” In other papers one finds adequate recognition of the principle of the universal,—e.g., this passage: “Dress a figure in what costume you please (however fantastic, however barbarous), but add the expression which is common to all faces, the properties which are common to all drapery in its elementary principles, and the picture will belong to all times and places” (IX. 20).

Here I am concerned with showing merely on what aspects of the problem Hazlitt threw his emphasis.

⁵⁹ Pre-Raphaelitism and Other Essays and Lectures on Art, by Ruskin, ed. L. Binyon, Introd., p. vii.

⁶⁰ Ibid., p. 277.

⁶¹ Ibid., p. 63.

⁶² Ibid., p. 98.

⁶³ Ibid., p. 165. Cf. Chap. I. of Vol. III. of Modern Painters— “Touching the Grand Style.”

⁶⁴ It is hard to use the term “classicism” without offending someone. My use of the terms “classicism,” “realism,” “romanticism,” is that presented in W. A. Neilson's Essentials of Poetry. I have not, however, attempted to distinguish here between “classicism” and “neo-classicism”; but I do not mean to exclude imagination and closeness to fact from the excellences of great classical works. The greater the work of art, the more evenly it exhibits all three qualities in fusion. Perhaps it would be right to reserve the adjective “classical” for such masterpieces, and to apply “pseudo-classical” to works characterized by rationality and regard for form, but deficient in sense of fact and in imagination.

⁶⁵ The tendencies of the art-criticism of so voluminous and, if I may say it, so uncritical a writer as Ruskin do not lend themselves to succinct statement. For his own strictures upon his early work in Modern Painters, see Frondes Agrestes, the little book of selections chosen by a female admirer and published by the author's consent. Caution against too great particularity is frequent in Ruskin's Academy notes and other papers. Mr. Binyon, indeed, is more impressed by his warnings against excess of detail than by his insistence on the beauty of it.