Under this point of view I would fain justify the disgusting exhibition of the harpies in Virgil; but in this case, it is not a real and present hunger which they occasion, but an impending hunger which they prophesy; and besides, the whole prophecy resolves itself into a play of words. Dante, too, not only prepares us for the story of Ugolino's starvation by the very disgustful and ghastly position in which he places him with his former persecutor in hell; but the story itself is not without traits of the disgusting, which are particularly remarkable in that part where the sons offer themselves as food for their father. I shall give in the note a passage from one of Beaumont and Fletcher's dramas, which might indeed have stood in the place of all other examples, were I not compelled to acknowledge it as somewhat overdrawn. *

* The passage to which Leasing here alludes is in the 3d Act of the "Sea Voyage," in which a conversation occurs among the crew of a French pirate, wrecked on a desert island, regarding the sufferings they are enduring from want of provisions. Our author may well acknowledge this picture to be overdrawn; indeed so exaggerated does it appear to

I come now to the objects of disgust in painting. Were it even indisputable, that there are no objects, however disgustful to the sight, which, on their own account, would necessarily be renounced by painting as a Fine Art, yet as a general rule, it would be proper for the painter to avoid such objects, since the association of ideas renders their representations also disgusting. In a picture of the entombment of Christ, Pordenone has represented one of the bystanders holding his nose. This action is censured by Richardson solely on account of the lapse of

*

time not having been sufficient to produce corruption. In the raising of Lazarus, on the contrary, he considers it allowable in the painter to represent one of the bystanders in such a position, because the history expressly states that his body had become corrupted. To me this representation seems intolerable even here; for our disgust is excited, not merely by the

me, and so gratuitously disgusting throughout, that I have taken the liberty to leave it out altogether.—Note of the

actual presence of an offensive smell, but by the very idea of it. We avoid those things which we know to yield a disagreeable odor, even when our sense of smelling is destroyed by a cold. But the painter, we may be told, makes choice of the disgusting, not on its own account, but with the same view as the poet; namely, to strengthen the ridiculous and the fearful. Let him do so at his peril! The observations I have already made with regard to the hideous in this case, apply with increased force to the disgusting. It loses infinitely less of its effect in an imitation presented to the eye than in one directed to the ear, and is therefore less capable in the former case of an intimate union with the ingredients of the ridiculous and the fearful. As soon as the surprise is over, as soon as the first eager look is satisfied, it becomes instantly separated, and stands out distinct in all its crude deformity.

TWENTY-SIXTH SECTION.

Remarks on Winkelmann's History of Art among the Ancients. —Reflections on the Author of the Statue of Laocoon.

Winkelmann's History of Ancient Art having at length appeared, I determined not to write another line without reading it; for to attempt to philosophize on art from mere general ideas, can only lead to the adoption of fancies of our own, which, sooner or later, may be found, to our confusion, contradicted by the authority of works of art. The ancients were well acquainted with the bonds of union existing between painting and poetry, and these they have been careful not to draw closer than the nature of each art will properly admit. What the ancient artists have done will therefore serve to indicate to me what artists in general should do; and when the torch of history is borne by one so capable

of directing its rays with judgment as the author just named, speculation may boldly follow in its light.

I dipped into the History of Art, as is usual with a voluminous work, before commencing seriously to peruse it. My great curiosity was to know the author's opinion of the Laocoon; not of the science of the work, on which he had already treated in another publication, but of the period at which it was executed. With whom, then, does he concur;—with those who believe Virgil to have had the groupe before his eyes, or those who suppose the artists to have followed the poet ?

It has been a gratification to me to find that he is entirely silent with respect to any direct imitation. Where, indeed, is the absolute necessity for such imitation ? It is by no means impossible that the resemblances which I have before noticed, between the poetic picture and the work of art, are accidental, and not intentional. Indeed, not only is there room to doubt that the one was the prototype of the other, but there is not even any necessity to suppose that