defines it in his Letter to Sir Joshua Rey-
nolds "such objects as are proper subjects
"for painting." Both these definitions.
seem to me (what may perhaps appear a
contradiction) at once too vague,
and too
confined; for though we are not to expect
any definition to be so accurate and com-
prehensive, as both to supply the place,
and stand the test of investigation, yet if
it do not in some degree separate the thing
defined from all others, it differs little from
any general truth on the same subject. For
instance, it is very true that picturesque
objects do please from some quality capa-
ble of being illustrated in painting; but so
also does every object that is represented
in painting if it please at all, otherwise it
would not have been painted: and hence
we ought to conclude, what certainly is not
meant, that all objects which please in
pictures are therefore picturesque; for no
distinction or exclusion is made.

Were

* End of Essay on Picturesque Beauty, page 36.

L

any other person to define picturesque objects to be those which please from some striking effect of form, colour, or light and shadow,---such a definition would indeed give but a very indistinct idea of the thing defined; but it would be hardly more vague, and at the same time much less confined than the others, for it would not have an exclusive reference to a particular art.

I hope to shew in the course of this work, that the picturesque has a character not less separate and distinct than either the sublime or the beautiful, nor less independent of the art of painting. It has indeed been pointed out and illustrated by that art, and is one of its most striking ornaments; but has not beauty been pointed out and illustrated by that art also, nay, according to the poet, brought into existence by it?

Si Venerem Cous nunquam posuisset Apelles,
Mersa sub æquoreis illa lateret aquis.

Examine the forms of the early Italian

painters, or of those, who, at a later period, lived where the study of the antique, then fully operating at Rome on minds highly prepared for its influence, had not yet taught them to separate what is beautiful, from the general mass: you might almost conclude that beauty did not then exist; yet those painters were capable of exact imitation, though not of selection. Examine grandeur of form in the same manner; look at the dry, meagre forms of Albert Durer, a man of genius even in Raphael's estimation; of Pietro Perugino, Andrea Mantegna, &c. and compare them with those of M. Angelo and Raphael: nature was not more dry and meagre in Germany or Perugia than at Rome. Compare their landscapes and back grounds with those of Titian; nature was not changed, but a mind of a higher cast, and instructed by the experience of all who had gone before, rejected minute detail; and pointed out, by means of such selections, and such combinations as were congenial to its own sub

lime conceptions, in what forms, in what colours, and in what effects, grandeur in landscape consisted. Can it then be doubted that grandeur and beauty have been pointed out and illustrated by painting as well as picturesqueness*? Yet, would it be a just definition of sublime or of beautiful objects, to say that they were such (and, let the words be taken in their most liberal construction) as pleased from some quality capable of being illustrated in painting, or, that were proper subjects for that art? The ancients, indeed, not only referred beauty of form to painting, but even beauty of colour; and the poet who could describe his mistress's complexion, by comparing it to the tints of Apelles's pictures, must have thought that beauty of

* I have ventured to make use of this word, which I believe does not occur in any writer, from what appeared to me the necessity of having some one word to oppose to beauty and sublimity, in a work where they are so often compared,

every kind was highly illustrated by the art to which he referred.

The principles of those two leading characters in nature, the sublime and the beautiful, have been fully illustrated and discriminated by a great master; but even when I first read that most original work, I felt that there were numberless objects which give great delight to the eye, and yet differ as widely from the beautiful, as from the sublime. The reflections which I have since been led to make, have convinced me that these objects form a distinct class, and belong to what may properly be called the picturesque.

That term, as we may judge from its etymology, is applied only to objects of sight; and indeed in so confined a manner, as to be supposed merely to have a reference to the art from which it is named. I am well convinced, however, that the name and reference only are limited and uncertain, and that the qualities which make objects picturesque, are not only as dis