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those talents which in other studies have 

 gained him such deserved reputation, he would 

 have known that to challenge Titian to vie with 

 tulips and crocusses, is hardly less improper 

 than to make the same challenge to Raphael ; 

 that in truth he might almost as well have pitted 

 nature against nature, and challenged a forest 

 in autumn to vie with a flower-garden in 

 spring; and that although Titian is renowned 

 ahove all other painters for the glow and richness 

 of his colours, yet that Van Huyssum came in- 

 finitely nearer to the tints of flowers in point of 

 exact imitation, and probability of deception, 

 without aspiring to the same high and general 

 fame as a colourist. The study of pictures also, 

 by presenting the varied and well-chosen 

 forms, which with their numberless happy 

 combinations are displayed in the works 

 of the most eminent painters, would have 

 convinced Dr. Warton, that Kent and his fol- 

 lowers had made a very small progress in the 

 choice of forms, or in the manner of arranging 

 them. They disdained indeed the square and 

 measured formality and method of the old 

 style, but substituted a method and formality 

 of their own, in which distinct and regular 

 curves had no little share ; and I am very sure 

 that if Dr. Warton, when his mind was full 

 of the compositions of eminent masters, had 

 been shewn the prints of the Fairy Queen, he 

 would not have ventured to ask — " Can Ken 



