Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

though, even with this arbitrary and unexampled PART I limitation, I can produce at least equal authority

in support of a contrary opinion.

"D'un pinceau delicat, l'artifice agréable

Du plus affreux objet, fait un objet aimable*.' 20. The beauty of those whimsical and extravagant paintings, called, from the subterraneous apartments in Rome, where the first specimens of them were found, grottesque, has never, I believe, been questioned: the brilliance and variety of the tints having afforded pleasure to every eye; and the airy lightness, and playful elegance of the forms, to every imagination, that has been acquainted with them. Yet, were we to meet with such extravagant and disproportioned buildings in reality; or such monstrous combinations of human, animal, and vegetable forms in nature, our understandings would revolt at them, and we should turn from them with scorn and disgust: but, in judging of the imitative representations of them, we do not consult our understandings, but merely our senses and imaginations; and to them they are pleasing and beautiful.

21. I am aware that I am here laying myself open to the cavils of a captious adversary; who may accuse me of calling the tattered rags and filth of a beggar, or the extravagant monsters of Boileau, Art Poetique, c. iii.

2

CHAP. V.

Of Sight.

PART I. grottesque beautiful, because I assert that they CHAP. V. contain beautiful variations of tint or light and Of Sight. shadow: but he may, with equal justice, accuse

me of calling a dunghill sweet, because I assert that it contains sugar; and that the sugar, when separated from the dross, will be of the same quality as that extracted from the cane. In the same manner, the beautiful tints and lights and shadows, when separated, in the imitation, from the disagreeable qualities, with which they were united, are as truly beautiful as if they had never been united with any such qualities, Properly, those substances only can be called sweet in which the qualities of sweetness predominate; and those only beautiful, in which the qualities of beauty predominate: but, if there be any means, as those above mentioned, of separating the subordinate sweet and beautiful qualities from those of a contrary kind, there can be no reason why they should be less sweet, or less beautiful when separated, than if they had never been mixt.

22. The natural consequence of confining beauty to smoothness or undulation, either of form or colour, is, that a person of such just taste and feeling, as my friend above mentioned, should discover it to be insipid, as he has done: and to remedy this defect, he proposes that a certain

CHAP. V.

portion of the quality, which he calls picturesque- PART I. ness, should be mixt with it, in order to give it the proper relish. Of the word Picturesque, I Of Sight. shall have more to say in another chapter; and, therefore, shall only observe, at present, that whosoever thinks beauty insipid, and conceives that the addition of any other quality is requisite to make it pleasing, has only involved himself in a confusion of terms, by attaching to the word beauty those ideas, which the rest of mankind attach to the word insipidity; and those, which the rest of mankind attach to the word beauty, to this nameless amalgamation, which he conceives to be an improvement of it. The difference is merely a difference of words, which three fourths of those, that have arisen in metaphysics and moral philosophy, as well as in religion, have been; and as long as the disputes concerning them are confined to the shedding of ink, and do not extend to the shedding of blood, they afford a very innocent amusement to the several disputants, of which I am now enjoying the benefit.

23. A very remarkable difference of this kind subsisted between the late president of the royal academy*, and the author of the Inquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful, which it is peculiarly

Sir Joshua Reynolds.

CHAP. V.

PART I. pleasant to recall upon the present occasion, be cause it never cooled the warmth of that friendOf Sight. ship, which remained unabated and uninterrupted between those two illustrious persons till death separated them; though both appealed to the public in favour of their respective opinions. The one makes beauty to consist in smooth and undulating surfaces, flowing lines, and colours that are analogous to them*; while the other maintains that beauty does not consist in any particular forms, lines, or colours, but is merely the result of habitual association; by which particular forms, proportions, and colours are appropriated to particular kinds and species, the individuals of which appear beautiful, or ugly, accordingly as they are respectively conformable or adverse to our ideas of the perfection of those particular forms; which ideas have arisen in the mind from a general and comparative view of the whole kind, class, or speciest. It will readily appear that these two great critics differ so widely merely from attaching different meanings to the word beauty; which, the one confines to the sensible, and the other to the intellectual qualities of things; both equally departing from that general use of the term, which is the only just criterion of propriety in speech.

Sublime and Beautiful, Part III.

+ Idler, No. 8.

24. I have already stated a position of the lat- PART I. ter writer, that if a man born blind were to recover

CHAP. V.

his sight, and the most beautiful woman were brought of Sight. before him, he could not determine whether she was handsome or not; which is unquestionably true: for till he had verified and ascertained the evidence of his sight by that of touch, he could not discover that she was a being of his own species; or, indeed, any thing more than a fleeting vision-a diminutive picture or impression upon the pupil of his eye. The author, however, grounds it upon a different reason; namely, that no man can judge whether an animal be beautiful or deformed in its kind, who has not seen many of that kind: wherefore he adds, that if two women, the one the most beautiful, and the other the most deformed, were placed before this blind man restored to sight, he could no better determine to which he should give the preference, having seen only those two. I believe, however, that, supposing (as the author evidently does suppose) the man by this time to be so far perfected in the perception of vision as to discover them to be females of his own species, or even animals of any species, the observation will be found to be extended beyond the truth: for, in all the higher ranks of animals, particularly in the human race, the highest of all, there are certain characters and dispositions of features better

« AnteriorContinuar »