sentation of which, or even by the endeavour to give such a representation, the painter cannot but improve in his art.--

My principal labour was employed on the whole together; and I was never weary of changing, and trying different modes and different effects. I had always some scheme

33 This also, if I recollect right, is said to have been the principal object of Correggio; and, however toilsome, is in various places strongly recommended by our author. "A steady attention to the general effect, (as he has observed in his fourteenth Discourse,) takes up more time, and is much more laborious to the mind, than any mode. of high finishing, or smoothness, without such attention." Again in the eleventh Discourse;

"There is nothing in our art which enforces such continued exertion and circumspection, as an attention to the general effect of the whole. It requires much study and much practice; it requires the painter's entire mind; whereas the parts may be finishing by nice touches. while his mind is engaged on other matters: he may even hear a play or a novel read without much disturbance. The Artist who flatters his own indolence, will continually find himself evading this active exertion, and applying his thoughts to the ease and laziness of highly finishing the parts; producing at last what Cowley calls..." labo. rious effects of idleness."

in my mind, and a perpetual desire to advance. By constantly endeavouring to do my best, I acquired a power of doing that with spontaneous facility, which at first was the effort of my whole mind: and my reward was threefold; the satisfaction resulting from acting on this just principle, improvement in my art, and the pleasure derived from a constant pursuit after excellence,

"I was always willing to believe that my uncertainty of proceeding in my works, that is, my never being sure of my hand, and my frequent alterations, arose from a refined taste, which could not acquiesce in any thing short of a high degree of excellence. I had not an opportunity of being early initiated in the principles of colouring: no man indeed could teach me.. If I have never been settled with respect to colouring, let it at the same time be remembered, that my unsteadiness in this respect proceeded from an inordinate desire to possess every

kind of excellence that I saw in the works of others, without considering that there is in colouring, as in style, excellencies which are incompatible with each other: however, this pursuit, or indeed any similar pursuit, prevents the artist from being tired of his art.---We all know how often those masters who sought after colouring, changed their manner; whilst others, merely from not seeing various modes, acquiesced all their lives in that with which they set out. On the contrary, I tried every effect of colour, and by leaving out every colour in its turn, showed every colour that I could do without it. As I alternately left out every colour, I tried every new colour; and often, as is well known, failed. The former practice, I am aware, may be compared by those whose first object is ridicule, to that of the poet mentioned in the Spectator, who in a poem of twenty-four books, contrived in each book to leave out a letter. But I was influenced by no such idle or foolish affecta

tion. My fickleness in the mode of colouring arose from an eager desire to attain the highest excellence. This is the only merit I can assume to myself from my conduct in that respect."

34 Our author was so anxious to discover the methods used by the Venetian Painters, that he destroyed some valuable ancient pictures by rubbing out the various layers of colour, in order to investigate and ascertain it.

Shortly before the first edition of these works was published, some hopes were entertained that the process employed by the great colourists of former times had been preserved; and I was furnished by an eminent artist with an account of the manner in which it had been discovered. Among the manuscript papers of Captain Morley, who had travelled into Italy in the beginning of the last century, was found one supposed to contain the process of colouring used by Titian, the Bassans, and other masters of the Venetian School; which appeared to several of our principal artists and connoisseurs so likely to be genuine, that they gave the possessor of these papers a valuable consideration for the secret that they contained, which was communicated to them under an obligation not to divulge it. As far however as it has hitherto been tried, this process has not, I conceive, answered the expectations that were previously entertained concerning it.

After the gross and unparalleled imposition practised on the publick in the year 1795, by means of forged Manuscripts, under the name of SHAKSPEARE, (the fabri

Thus ingenuously and modestly has this great painter spoken of himself in the few

cation of which, though detected, found a puny, but perfectly homogeneous, champion, whose mortified vanity prompted him to abet and countenance that silly fiction, by confident and groundless assertions, false quotations, and arguments still more flimsy and absurd than the im posture itself,) after such a deception, it was not at all surprising that the cautious inquirer should have been slow in giving credit to any new discovery of ancient manuscripts: but the cases were extremely different; for whether the process of colouring said to be discovered was the genuine method of the Venetian School, or at least one similar in its effects, was a matter of experiment, and easily ascertained. Some experiments have accordingly been made, and it seems, with no great success. ever ancient therefore these documents may be, they hitherto appear to be of little value.

How

It is highly probable that the great colourists of former times used certain methods in mixing and laying on their colours, which they did not communicate to others, or at least did not set down in writing; their scholars contenting themselves with adopting as much of the practice of their masters, as inspection and close observation would give them; and that by being thus confined to oral tradition, the mode which they followed, has been lost. Our great painter, however, had undoubtedly attained a part of the ancient process used in the Venetian School; and by various methods of his own invention produced a similar, though perhaps not quite so brilliant an effect of colour.