turn away his eyes in disgust. His feelings will be shocked by the violent expression of anguish, unmodified by any of that beauty which previously engaged his sympathy and compas

sion.

But independently of the violent and hideous distortion which it produces in the rest of the countenance, a mouth drawn widely open is in itself an unseemly spot upon the canvass, and an ugly hollow in the marble, presenting the most disagreeable effect imaginable. Montfaucon showed but little taste in passing off an old bearded head, with an outstretched mouth, for a Jupiter pronouncing an oracle.* Is it necessary that a God should bawl out his prophecies at the top of his throat? Or, was there reason to fear lest a more pleasing turn of the mouth should render his declarations suspicious? little do I credit the statement of Valerius, that in the picture of Timanthes, already alluded to, Ajax was represented crying aloud.† Masters of far less excellence in the period of the decline

As

of Art, have never represented even the rudest barbarians, though crouched in terror of their lives beneath the conqueror's sword, shrieking aloud with their mouths wide open.*

It is certain that this depression of extreme bodily pain to a more subdued expression, is evident in many of the ancient works of art. The Hercules suffering in the poisoned tunic, the work of an ancient master whose name is unknown, is not the Hercules of Sophocles, who shrieks so frightfully that "the Locrian hills and the Eubcean rocks re-echo to his cries." He displays more of the melancholy of affection, than the boisterous expression of violent agony.† Another instance may be referred to in the Philoctetes of Pythagoras Leontinus, who seemed, we are told, to impart his sufferings to the spectator; an effect which would certainly have been destroyed by the slightest trace of the horrific. If it be asked from what authority I learn that this master executed a statue of Philoctetes, I reply that it is from a passage in Pliny, so

Bellori Admiranda, tab. 11, 12.

+ Plinius, lib. xxxiv., sect. 19.

palpably mutilated or interpolated, that I am surprised that the task of amending the reading should have been reserved for me.*

THIRD SECTION.

It is impossible that Truth and Expression can form the primary Law of Art, as the Artist's Imitation is confined to a single Moment, and the Painter is, moreover, limited to one single Point of View.-The Delineation of the utmost extent of Expression confines the Imagination of the Spectator.— All transitory Effects become permanently fixed by Art, and an extreme Expression, when too long continued, becomes disgusting. On the Diversity of the Signs employed by the Fine Arts depends the Facility, and even the Possibility, of combining several of them in Order to produce a common Effect.

In modern times, as I have already observed, art has assumed a far wider range than that within which the ancients restricted it. Its field of imitation, we are told, extends over the whole face of visible nature, of which beauty forms but a small component part. Truth and expression, it will be said, are its primary law, and as Nature herself does not hesitate to sacrifice beauty to qualities of higher importance, it behoves the

artist likewise to keep it in subordination to the grand principle of his art, and to pursue it no further than truth and expression will permit. It will be sufficient if, by means of truth and expression, that which is offensive to the sight in nature, is converted into what is beautiful in art.

Leaving uncontested in the mean time the accuracy or inaccuracy of these notions, it will be necessary to seek elsewhere that explanation which they certainly do not afford of the principle which should lead the artist notwithstanding to moderate the expression of passion, and not to adopt for imitation its utmost limit of effect. I am inclined to think we shall find a ready clue to this inquiry in this one circumstance, that all the representations of Art are necessarily restricted by its material limits to a single instant of time.

If it be true that the artist can adopt from the face of ever-varying nature only so much of her mutable effects as will belong to one single moment, and that the painter, in particular, can seize this single moment only under one solitary