importance with the art of unfolding truths that are useful to

mankind, and which make us better or wiser. Nor can those works

which remind us of the poverty and meanness of our nature, be

considered as of equal rank with what excites ideas of grandeur, or

raises and dignifies humanity; or, in the words of a late poet,

which makes the beholder learn to venerate himself as man.

It is reason and good sense therefore which ranks and estimates

every art, and every part of that art, according to its importance,

from the painter of animated down to inanimated nature. We will

not allow a man, who shall prefer the inferior style, to say it is

his taste; taste here has nothing, or at least ought to have

nothing to do with the question. He wants not taste, but sense,

and soundness of judgment.

Indeed, perfection in an inferior style may be reasonably preferred

to mediocrity in the highest walks of art. A landscape of Claude

Lorraine may be preferred to a history of Luca J ordano; but hence

appears the necessity of the connoisseur's knowing in what consists

the excellence of each class, in order to judge how near it

approaches to perfection.

Even in works of the same kind, as in history painting, which is

composed of various parts, excellence of an inferior species,

carried to a very high degree, will make a work very valuable, and

in some measure compensate for the absence of the higher kind of

merits. It is the duty of the connoisseur to know and esteem, as

much as it may deserve, every part of painting; he will not then

think even Bassano unworthy of his notice, who, though totally

devoid of expression, sense, grace, or elegance, may be esteemed on

account of his admirable taste of colours, which, in his best

works, are little inferior to those of Titian.

Since I have mentioned Bassano, we must do him likewise the justice