DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61012#0164
i3o THE EIGHTH DISCOURSE.
must be ultimately referred. He who is ambitious to
enlarge the boundaries of his art, must extend his views
beyond the precepts which are found in books or may be
drawn from the practice of his predecessors, to a knowledge
of those precepts in the mind, those operations of intellec-
tual nature—to which everything that aspires to please
must be proportioned and accommodated.
Poetry having a more extensive power than our art,
exerts its influence over almost all the passions; among
those may be reckoned one of our most prevalent dis-
positions—anxiety for the future. Poetry operates by
raising our curiosity, engaging the mind by degrees to take
an interest in the event, keeping that event suspended, and
surprising at last with an unexpected catastrophe.
The painter’s art is more confined, and has nothing that
corresponds with, or perhaps is equivalent to, this power
and advantage of leading the mind on, till attention is
totally engaged. What is done by Painting must be done
at one blow ; curiosity has received at once all the satisfac-
tion it can ever have. There are, however, other intellectual
qualities and dispositions which the Painter can satisfy and
affect as powerfully as the poet: among those we may
reckon our love of novelty, variety, and contrast; these
qualities, on examination, will be found to refer to a certain
activity and restlessness which has a pleasure and delight
in being exercised and put in motion. Art, therefore, only
administers to those wants and desires of the mind.
It requires no long disquisition to show that the
dispositions which I have stated actually subsist in the
human mind. Variety reanimates the attention, which is
apt to languish under a continual sameness. Novelty
makes a more forcible impression on the mind than can be
made by the representation of what we have often seen
must be ultimately referred. He who is ambitious to
enlarge the boundaries of his art, must extend his views
beyond the precepts which are found in books or may be
drawn from the practice of his predecessors, to a knowledge
of those precepts in the mind, those operations of intellec-
tual nature—to which everything that aspires to please
must be proportioned and accommodated.
Poetry having a more extensive power than our art,
exerts its influence over almost all the passions; among
those may be reckoned one of our most prevalent dis-
positions—anxiety for the future. Poetry operates by
raising our curiosity, engaging the mind by degrees to take
an interest in the event, keeping that event suspended, and
surprising at last with an unexpected catastrophe.
The painter’s art is more confined, and has nothing that
corresponds with, or perhaps is equivalent to, this power
and advantage of leading the mind on, till attention is
totally engaged. What is done by Painting must be done
at one blow ; curiosity has received at once all the satisfac-
tion it can ever have. There are, however, other intellectual
qualities and dispositions which the Painter can satisfy and
affect as powerfully as the poet: among those we may
reckon our love of novelty, variety, and contrast; these
qualities, on examination, will be found to refer to a certain
activity and restlessness which has a pleasure and delight
in being exercised and put in motion. Art, therefore, only
administers to those wants and desires of the mind.
It requires no long disquisition to show that the
dispositions which I have stated actually subsist in the
human mind. Variety reanimates the attention, which is
apt to languish under a continual sameness. Novelty
makes a more forcible impression on the mind than can be
made by the representation of what we have often seen