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98 9B On Affectation one on the other; and it is to be hoped that Canova's style was the transition to a great improvement in both. His ^^ Boxers and his Hercules are positively fearful: they are French pictures in marble; and, as if to shew how he could err in both extremes, he has substituted a simpering prettiness in his Graces for the dignity of the ancients. In his Dancer we have the studied attitudes and airs of the ballet fixed in the stiffness of a statue. Still he has the merit of having in many of his works gone a great part of the way back to- wards the antique; and such men as Flaxman, Thorwaldsen, and Ranch, have nearly completed the task. The first demand which we hear made by the mass of those who aiFect to judge works of art is expression, and expression of some- thing definite : they like to point to a face and be able to tell exactly what passion or feeling it is meant to display. Hence the Dying Gladiator is more popular perhaps than any other statue ; and hence, where we can find one who estimates properly the tranquil beauty of Bellini, Perugino, Francia^ and RaphaePs earlier manner, there are a thousand w4io dwell with raptures on the works of the later Bolognese school and of the Flemings, even in cases where their great and characteristic merits are impaired by this very exaggeration. What shall we say when we find ^^Sir Joshua Reynolds himself saying that " The Apollo, the Venus, the Laocoon, the Gla- diator, have a certain composition of action, have contrasts sufficient to give grace and energy in a high degree ; but it must be confessed, of the many thousand antique statues which we have, that their general characteristic is bordering at least on inanimate insipidity ''^ To fix any line by which to measure the due quantity of expression of passion is impossible : it necessarily varies with the power of the artist. There must be a certain groundwork (if I may use the expression) of character, to support the feeling : if the latter be so strong as entirely to efface ^0 Compare A. W. Schlegels Schreiben an Goethe iiber einige Arbeiten in Rom lebender Kiinstler, 1805. (Krit. Schriften, Th. ii. p. 339.) We might apply to these two works the word irapivdvporov as given by Longinus, Sect. iii. touto) irapaKeiTai TpLTov TL KaKLUS clSos: kv ToT? TraOijTi/cots, oirep 6 QeoSwpos Trapevdvpcrov eKciXeL. ecTTi ^e Trddo^ ccKaipov Kal kcvov evQa fxt] Sel ttccOous, tj a/meTpov evda ^en-piov ScT. Compare Winkelmann, iv. p. 155. Junius de Pict. Vet. p. 187. '1 Discourse viii. Compare Winkelmann Werke, iv. p. 158.