PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION. IN this edition, the reader will find some considerable additions; but the chief difference is in the arrangement, which I am very conscious, was in many parts extremely defective. Several of the chapters in the first volume are entirely new modelled; and in the second, a great deal of new arrangement has taken place, especially in the middle part of the last Essay. Those readers only (should there be any such) who may have the cu riosity to compare the present with former editions, can judge of the pains that the new modelling has cost me: but I shall think them well bestowed, if I should be less open to those criticisms, which must have presented themselves to every reader of a methodical turn of mind. Another alteration, which I trust will be thought an improvement, is that of throwing the greater part of the notes to the end of the volumes. One note, of much greater length than I could have wished, is added to the second volume, in consequence of a very pointed attack from my friend Mr. Knight, in the second edition of the Analytical Inquiry; it is indeed almost a controversial dissertation on the temple of Vesta, usually called the Sybill's temple, at Tivoli I am persuaded, however, that I have made no small amends for the tediousness of controversy, by some very curious information I received on the subject, the accuracy of which I have no doubt may be safely relied on. The third volume remains nearly as it was, with scarcely any alteration: there is, however, one addition to the Dialogue, of a few last words, by way of summing up the points of the controversy, and likewise an appendix, which, like the note just mentioned, was occasioned by some strictures of Mr. Knight's, and almost equals it in length. I am still very largely in his debt, on Mr. Burke's, as well as on my own account; and am ashamed of being so long in arrears. However slow, I hope at last to leave nothing unpaid; but as I have undertaken the defence of such a man as Mr. Burke, I feel anxious that it should be as little unworthy of him, as it is in my power to make it. CONTENTS. The artist's design in real scenery, must change with the growth and decay of trees: the only unchanging compositions, are in Distinction between the painter and the improver ... Between looking at pictures, merely with a reference to other pictures, and studying them with a view to the improvement The general principles of both arts the same The manner in which a picture of Claude, would probably be improved by Mr. Brown-Anecdote of an improved picture of Causes of the neglect of the picturesque in modern improvement 21 Intricacy and variety, characteristics of the picturesque: mono- |