_Coroll._--An adopted idea or figure in the works of genius will be a
foil or a companion; but an idea of genius borrowed by mediocrity scorns
the base alliance and crushes all its mean associates--it is the
Cyclop's thumb, by which the pigmy measured his own littleness,--"or
hangs like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief."
51. Genius, inspired by invention, rends the veil that separates
existence from possibility; peeps into the dark, and catches a shape, a
feature, or a colour, in the reflected ray.
52. Talent, though panting, pursues genius through the plains of
invention, but stops short at the brink that separates the real from the
possible. Virgil followed Homer in making Mezentius speak to Rhœbus, but
shrank from the reply of the prophetic courser.[7]
53. Whenever the medium of any work, whether lines, colour, grouping,
diction, becomes so predominant as to absorb the subject in its
splendour, the work is degraded to an inferior order.
54. The painter, who makes an historical figure address the spectator
from the canvass, and the actor who addresses a soliloquy to you from
the stage, have equal claims to your contempt or pity.
55. Common-place figures are as inadmissible in the grand style of
painting as common-place characters or sentiments in poetry.
_Coroll._--Common-place figures were first introduced by the gorgeous
machinists of Venice, and adopted by the Bolognese school of Eclectics;
the modern school of Rome from Carlo Maratta to Battoni knew nothing
else; and they have been since indiscriminately disseminated on this
side of the Alps, by those whom mediocrity obliged to hide themselves in
crowds, or a knack at grouping stimulated to aggregate a rabble.