of your art, you will in the end do honour to yourselves, by acquiring for your country that superior reputation in the arts also, which it has long since possessed in every thing else. In the next lecture (God willing) I shall offer to your consideration some remarks on DESIGN. In hav? GENTLEMEN, LECTURE II.- ON DESIGN. In the preceding discourse I laid before you a view of the growth and progress of the arts, in the different ages and nations; and it has evidently appeared through the whole course, and in every stage of this progress, that the same causes by which art was advanced or retarded, invigorated or corrupted, were equally operative in advancing or retarding, invigorating or corrupting the mental faculties, in every thing else that was truly valuable and worthy our esteem and praise. It is a vulgar error, that your art can ever derive any peculiar advantage from corruption and depravity;-quite the reverse; those almost divine faculties of the mind, formed for the pursuit of the amiable, the admirable, and the perfect, which put forth and flourished in the free and intelligent nations, have, under meanness, ignorance, and oppressive tyranny, lain either totally dormant, or were reduced to a mere caput mortuum, divested of everything spiritual, sublime, and interesting. We shall now direct our attention towards the component parts of the art, beginning with Design, as the foundation and chief. It may be necessary previously to observe, that although in the executive part of the art very little, if anything, remains to be wished for in addition to what has been done by the ingenious men of the two last centuries; yet it is universally acknowledged, by all intelligent people, that there is in the great monuments of Grecian art a strain of perfection, beauty, and sublimity, far beyond anything the moderns have produced. Endeavouring to account for this indubitable fact, some ingenious writers, of less knowledge than fancy, have enthusiastically supposed, that either the Grecian artists possessed intellects transcending the ordinary measure of modern capacity, or that they formed their works after living originals, of a perfection superior to anything now to be found. The futility of these suppositions I have endeavoured to show in a work*, published some years since, where it appears sufficiently evident, that all this observable. superiority of the ancient Greeks over the moderns arose entirely from moral causes, and principally from the advantages of their education that the arts at their resurrection in Italy were, for the most part, confined to the practice of mechanical, uneducated people, whose objects of pursuit were ordinary and unelevated; but that, on the contrary, the Gre cian artists were highly cultivated in their mental faculties, familiarised to the most subtle and refined philosophy, and appear to have considered the whole of created nature, with all its scattered perfections, but as a mere chaos and rude mass of incoherent materials, thrown together by the Great Creator for the exercise of those intellectual faculties he had bestowed upon man,-whom he had impressed with ideas of perfection and a capacity for combining them to a degree, to which individual nature might make some distant approaches, but at which it would never arrive. Hence have been derived all those masterly works of poetry, painting, and sculpture, which have filled the mind with astonishment, instruction, and pleasure; and which will ever remain unequalled by those who do not draw their materials from the same source. These remains of Grecian perfection are collected in academies and places of study; yet from the mere imitation of them but little can be expected. We must be able to investigate the principles upon which those statues were constructed, and adopt the same mode of study in our own pursuit and imitation of nature, or we labour to no purpose. But as the doing of this comprehends the very essence of design, which is the subject of our inquiry this night, I An Enquiry into the Real and Imaginary Obstructions to the Acquisition of the Arts in England. - - By James Barry, Royal Academician, and Member of the Clementine Academy of Bologna. Becket, 1775. shall endeavour to trace out the essential principles of design in that common nature, where, though they have been overlooked, they have always existed; and where our own country will furnish us with materials equal to any enjoyed by the Greeks, or by people better than the Greeks, if any such ever were. But as this important matter of design embraces almost all that is intellectual in the art, is intimately associated with, and indeed arises from, the most secret sources of the human mind, and heart, it will be impossible for us to search it too deeply. : By the word design, taken in its most comprehensive sense, is understood the idea, scheme, or conception, which a workman or artist endeavours to express. This great genus comprehends all arts whatever. But in the family of the imitative arts, the idea, conception, or scheme of the artist can be no otherwise expressed than by an imitation of visible objects, and of the story, action, circumstance, or occasion which unites them together. Design, then, in these arts, is that conception which is expressed by the artificial arrangement and imitation of such natural objects as either do, or might possibly exist. It is effected in the painter's art by imitating the forms, colours, and proportional arrangement of natural objects. In sculpture, by the imitation of proportion and form only. Architecture, as it copies no natural archetype, cannot be considered as an imitative art in its necessary and essential parts, but in the mere embellishment and ornaments only, where it is obliged to have recourse to the painter's or the sculptor's art. Imitations (to use the words of one of the most profound and wisest of men) differ from each other in three things; either because in general they imitate with different means; or different objects; or differently, and not in the same manner. Since they who imitate copy living characters, there is a necessity to exhibit us, either better; as we are; or worse. The painter Polygnotus made his pictures handsomer; and Pauson more deformed; but Dionysius copied nature as he found it.* Homer made men better; Cleophon Aristotle (Poetica, c. 2.). His words are, Пoλúyvwтos μÈV KρEÍTTOVŠ Παύσων δε χείρους, Διονύσιος δὲ ὁμοίους είκαζε: “Polygnotus paints men better than they are, Pauson worse, and Dionysius as they are.' was Dionysius of Colophon; Pauson is not otherwise known.-W. This like; whereas Hegemon and Nicocharis made them worse. It may be here worth observing, that in the mere imitation of individual ordinary nature, nothing is required but the skill and accuracy of the eye and hand only; whereas in the imitation with that selection which endeavours to make things better, the exertions of the imagination and judgment (the two highest powers of the mind) are absolutely necessary in order to obtain that consistent, perfect, and extraordinary totality which constitutes the perfection of the art, and upon which only the artist can ground his title to genius, and be considered as the maker, inventor, or creator of his works; for, as Aristotle observes, some pages after the passage above quoted, "It appears plainly that the poet's business is not to speak the things that have happened; but such as might have been, and are possible, according to likelihood and necessity. For the historian and poet differ, not because they write in verse or in prose; but they differ in this, that the former in reality speaks the things that have been; the latter, those which might be. Poetry, therefore, doubtless affords greater scope than history for sublimity and the display of wisdom." This selection is as indispensably the business of the painter and sculptor, as of the poet. Their several imitations, which are equally intended to display beauty, sublimity, and wisdom, ought to have nothing to do with imperfection and unfitness, either in the choice of the objects themselves, of their several component parts, or in the fable, story, or action in which they are employed. These admirable qualities of beauty, sublimity, and wisdom, ) so essentially requisite in the design of a great artist, can only be found in abstract or general nature; and when found and united by the skill of the artist, they are easily and with pleasure recognised by all men: for our ideas of the several species of sensible objects, and the generally relative proportion of their component parts with each other, and with the whole together, must necessarily be much more perfect than our own particular ideas can be, respecting those relatives in fleeting and transitory individuals; in other words, we are much better acquainted with man or horse in its general structure, than we can possibly be with respect to the particular or peculiar fabrication of this or that individual man or horse. When, for instance, we judge of that noble animal the horse, who is not struck with the large, clear, and brisk eye, full of fire, the lean head, large open nostrils, the arched neck, the chest and shoulders well divided and square, the flank and thighs fleshy and thick, large ham, and the shanks sharp, sinewy, and detached? How readily, and how generally do we recognise the contrary qualities as faults,the dull, muddy, inanimate eye; the heavy head; drooping, hollow neck, thin flanks; and gummy legs! The excesses and deficiencies in the human form do not escape even the most vulgar observation; their disapprobation, however coarsely, yet is strongly and accurately expressed by the homely phrases of squabbish and short, slim and tall, the hatchet or the pudding face, rabbit shoulders, pot belly, spindle shanks, knocked or baker knees, club feet, porterlike, tailorlike, and so forth. These epithets indicate sensations exceedingly complex; and it is well known that in ages less civilised, men were generally nicknamed from excesses and deficiencies much less obvious. In short, general ideas are the first ideas we acquire; we know the species before we know the individual; and children, as Aristotle observes, will call every woman mother for some time. In all individuals, of every species, there is necessarily a visible tendency to a certain point or form. In this point or form the standard of each species rests. The deviations from this, either by excess or deficiency, are of two kinds: first, deviations indicating a more peculiar adaptation to certain characters of advantage and utility, such as strength, agility, and so forth; even mental as well as corporeal, since they sometimes result from habit and education, as well as from original conformation. In these deviations are to be found those ingredients which, in their composition and union, exhibit the abstract or ideal perfection in the several classes or species of character. The second kind of deviation is that which, having no reference to any thing useful or advantageous, but rather visibly indicating the contrary, as being useless, cumbersome, or deficient, is considered as deformity; and this deformity will be always found different in the several individuals, by either not being in the same part, in the same manner, or in the same degree. The points of agreement which indicate the species are, therefore, |