DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.75271#0087
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Common nature is no more fit for a picture than plain narration is,
for a poem: a painter must raise his ideas beyond what he sees, and
form a model of perfection in his own mind which is not to be found
in reality; but yet such a one as is probable, and rational. Particu-
larly with respeCt to mankind, he must as it were raise the whole
species, and give them all imaginable beauty, and grace, dignity,
and perfection ; every several character, whether it be good, or bad,
amiable, or detestable, must be stronger, and more perfeCt.
At court, and elsewhere amongst people of condition, one sees
another sort of beings than in the country, or the remote, and infe-
rior parts of the town; and amongst these there are some few that
plainly distinguish themselves by their noble, and graceful airs, and
manner of acting. There is an easy gradation in all nature; the
mod stupid of animals are little more than vegetables, the mod sa-
gacious, and cunning are hardly inferior to the lowed order of men,
as the wisest, and most virtuous of these are little below the angels.
One may conceive an order superior to what can any where be
found on our globe; a kind of new world may be formed in the
imagination, considing as this, of people of all degrees, and cha-
racters, only heightened, and improved : a beautiful genteel woman
must have her defects overlooked, and what is wanting to complete
her character supplied: a brave man, and one honestly, and wisely
pursuing his own interest, in conjunction with that of his country,
must be imagined more brave, more wise, more exactly, and inssex-
ibly honest than any we know, or can hope to see: a villain must
be conceived to have something more diabolical than is to be found
even amongstus; a gentleman must be more so, and a peasant have
more of the gentleman, and so of the rest. With such as these an
artist must people his pictures.
Thus the ancients have done; notwithstanding the great, and
exalted ideas we may have of the people of those times from their
histories (which probably are improved by the historians using the
same
Common nature is no more fit for a picture than plain narration is,
for a poem: a painter must raise his ideas beyond what he sees, and
form a model of perfection in his own mind which is not to be found
in reality; but yet such a one as is probable, and rational. Particu-
larly with respeCt to mankind, he must as it were raise the whole
species, and give them all imaginable beauty, and grace, dignity,
and perfection ; every several character, whether it be good, or bad,
amiable, or detestable, must be stronger, and more perfeCt.
At court, and elsewhere amongst people of condition, one sees
another sort of beings than in the country, or the remote, and infe-
rior parts of the town; and amongst these there are some few that
plainly distinguish themselves by their noble, and graceful airs, and
manner of acting. There is an easy gradation in all nature; the
mod stupid of animals are little more than vegetables, the mod sa-
gacious, and cunning are hardly inferior to the lowed order of men,
as the wisest, and most virtuous of these are little below the angels.
One may conceive an order superior to what can any where be
found on our globe; a kind of new world may be formed in the
imagination, considing as this, of people of all degrees, and cha-
racters, only heightened, and improved : a beautiful genteel woman
must have her defects overlooked, and what is wanting to complete
her character supplied: a brave man, and one honestly, and wisely
pursuing his own interest, in conjunction with that of his country,
must be imagined more brave, more wise, more exactly, and inssex-
ibly honest than any we know, or can hope to see: a villain must
be conceived to have something more diabolical than is to be found
even amongstus; a gentleman must be more so, and a peasant have
more of the gentleman, and so of the rest. With such as these an
artist must people his pictures.
Thus the ancients have done; notwithstanding the great, and
exalted ideas we may have of the people of those times from their
histories (which probably are improved by the historians using the
same