Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/104

94 94 On Affectation an anxiety so strong as to betray itself implies a consciousness of deficiency. So that even if the deficiency do not exist, we assume that nothing but a doubt of attaining the end could demand such attention to the means. In applying this to art I speak of course only with reference to the artist, not to those cases in which he intends to represent this feeling as existing in the subject of his work. In that case the fault is one of another kind, the choice of an unpleasing subject: a fault rare among the ancients^ but too common among the greatest modern artists, and closely connected with the point we are considering, as it has often arisen from a wish to display that skill and know- ledge which are of themselves but means. When the subject is chosen the artist's task is twofold : to conceive it in his own mind as he wishes to convey it to others, and to impart to those others, by the mechanical means of his art, a perfect image of that conception. There are certain principles which he must not violate, and which are to be traced in the works of great masters ; conditions indispensable, but not of themselves suf- ficient, and on which if he dwell, so as to make them an end, affectation will result. We constantly hear it objected, when a beauty is pointed out in a work of art, '' But I doubt if the artist meant that' Schellino; has observed that in the highest works the artist is necessarily not aware of all the beauties he is producing; and that works which want the stamp of this unconscious skill, are shallow and possess, as it were, no independent existence The artist has rea- soned out principles of excellence, and laboriously added beauty to beauty; but there was wanting that feeling which catches the leading character of the subject, and instinctively adapts every feature of the whole to that character. From this alone can be produced the thorough unity and reality of a work of nature. Sir Joshua Reynolds says, ^ " when a young artist is first told that his composition and his attitude must be contrasted, that he must turn the head contrary to the position of the body, in order to produce grace and animation; that his outline must be undulating and swelling 1 Ueber das Verhaltniss cler bildenden Kiinste zu der Natur. '"^ Discourse viii»