to acknowledge that, though he did not aspire to the dignity of

expressing the characters and passions of men, yet, with respect to

the facility and truth in his manner of touching animals of all

kinds, and giving them what painters call their character, few have

ever excelled him.

To Bassano we may add Paul Veronese and Tintoret, for their entire

inattention to what is justly esteemed the most essential part of

our art, the expression of the passions. Notwithstanding these

glaring deficiencies, we justly esteem their works; but it must be

remembered that they do not please from those defects, but from

their great excellences of another kind, and in spite of such

transgressions. These excellences, too, as far as they go, are

founded in the truth of general nature. They tell the truth,

though not the whole truth.

By these considerations, which can never be too frequently

impressed, may be obviated two errors which I observed to have

been, formerly at least, the most prevalent, and to be most

injurious to artists: that of thinking taste and genius to have

nothing to do with reason, and that of taking particular living

objects for nature.

I shall now say something on that part of taste which, as I have

hinted to you before, does not belong so much to the external form

of things, but is addressed to the mind, and depends on its

original frame, or, to use the expression, the organisation of the

soul; I mean the imagination and the passions. The principles of

these are as invariable as the former, and are to be known and

reasoned upon in the same manner, by an appeal to common sense

deciding upon the common feelings of mankind. This sense, and

these feelings, appear to me of equal authority, and equally

conclusive.