CORRESPONDENCE. 113 



engage hi the act, (the vow of mischief and revenge), according to 

 their characters and temperaments/... To us it seems that no national 

 temperament could bring together^ in willing, or even in tolerating 

 associations, the evil and the good — the splendid and the debased— 

 the fierce and the soft — which are here accumulated.... The Madon- 

 na-like figure who is nourishing her babe, and the girlish, yet in- 

 tellectual innocence, that gleams in the eyes of many others ; — could 

 they be found in such an assemblage ? Or, if the assemblage came 

 to them, could they remain, and preserve undarkened the sunny 

 expression of joy and charity which they display ; as if deaf and 

 blind to the passion, the drunkenness, the wild demoralization which 

 surround them." 



Thus, then, without deserving the charge of misogynical aversion 

 to beautiful women, as " unpleasing," a person may conceive that 

 their introduction in a work of art may involve an " impropriety," 

 even though, as Mr. Carey says, " the entire [[scen^] be a fiction." 



I forget whose free translation of Horace's Art of Poetry begins 

 thus: — 



•' If that Sir James a human face should draw. 

 With gelding's mane, and feathers of maceaw, 

 A lady's bosom, and a tail of cod, — 

 Would you not think the thing exceeding odd T* 



Assuredly we should I not because the objects themselves — a human 

 countenance, gay plumage, the female bust— are individually " dis- 

 pleasing," but because, thus collocated and wanting relation the one 

 to the other, their introduction would be " improper" — unfit. 

 Would a friend of the painter, then, think it sufficient to reply to a 

 criticism on the work — '' Ha ! your objection is not that these forms 

 are ill drawn or ill coloured ; oh no ! it is that they are too beauti- 

 ful, and beautifully painted." 



But " the entire is a fiction :" so, in fact, are all pictures of his- 

 torical and moral subjects; for whoever supposed that at any instant 

 the action stood still, while the characters formed themselves into a 

 " tableau^ for some conveniently placed artist to sketch from ? 

 But fictions should be consistent. It is not only the introduction of 

 " lions, tigers, elephants, and boa constrictors,"* as decorations of 

 English landscape, that should be considered as improprieties. Ho- 

 garth's Harlot's Progress, and his Industry and Idleness, are fic- 

 tions, but not therefore — ^not with any haughty assumption of the 

 " painter's licence" — would their designer have ventured to intro- 



• Analyst, p. 243. 

 NO. XV., VOL. IV. H. 



