In life what various scenes appear;
How differs every day,
We _now_, the face of comfort wear,
To-morrow of dismay.
As light and darkness each success,
So pleasure follows pain;
Our spirits, drooping while we bleed,
They brisker flow again.
Winter and summer have their turns,
Each vale its rising hills:
One hour the raging fever burnt,
The next an ague chills.
A mind at ease and free from care,
Can paradise excel:
But when in trouble and despair,
A palace then is hell.
NEW-YORK: _+Printed by JOHN BULL, No. 115, Cherry-Street+, where every
Kind of Printing work is executed with the utmost Accuracy and
Dispatch.--+Subscriptions+ for this +Magazine+ (at 2s. per month) are
taken in at the Printing-Office, and by E. MITCHELL, Bookseller, No. 9,
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_UTILE DULCI._
THE NEW-YORK WEEKLY MAGAZINE;
or, Miscellaneous Repository.
+Vol. II.+] +Wednesday, August 31, 1796.+ [+No. 61.+
+Rules for judging the beauties of painting, music, and poetry;
founded on a new examination of the word thought, as applied to
the fine arts.+
Thoughts are, generally speaking, all ideas sufficiently distinct to be
conveyed by signs. When speaking with a particular reference to the
belles lettres and polite arts, we mean, by thoughts, the ideas which
the artist attempts to raise by his performance, in contradistinction to
the manner in which they are raised or expressed.
In works of art, thoughts are what remain of a performance, when
stripped of its embellishments. Thus, a poet’s thoughts are what remains
of his poems, independently of the verification and of some ideas,
merely serving for its decoration and improvement.
Thoughts, therefore, are the materials proposed and applied by art to
its purposes. The dress in which they appear, or the form into which
they are moulded by the artist, is merely accidental; consequently, they
are the first object of attention in every work of art; the spirit, the
soul of a performance, which, if its thoughts are indifferent, is but of
little value, and may be compared to a palace of ice, raised in the most
regular form of an habitable structure, but, from the nature of its
materials, totally useless.
While, therefore, you are contemplating an historical picture, try to
forget that it is a picture; forget the painter, whose magic art has, by
lights and shades, created bodies where there are none. Fancy to
yourself that you are looking at men, and then attend to their actions.
Observe whether they are interesting; whether the persons express
thoughts and sentiments in their faces, attitudes, and motions; whether
you may understand the language of their airs and gestures; and whether
they tell you something remarkable. If you find it not worth your while
to attend to the persons thus realised by your fancy, the painter has
thought to little purpose.
Whilst listening to a musical performance, try to forget that you are
hearing sounds of an inanimate instrument, produced only by great and
habitual dexterity of lips or fingers. Fancy to yourself, that you hear
a man speaking some unknown language, and observe whether his sounds
express some sentiments; whether they denote tranquility or disturbance
of mind, soft or violent, joyful or grievous affections; whether they
express any character of the speaker; and whether the dialect be noble
or mean. If you cannot discover any of these requisites, then pity the
virtuoso for having left so much ingenuity destitute of thought.
In the same manner we must judge of poems, especially of the lyric kind.
That ode is valuable, which, when deprived of its poetical dress, still
affords pleasing thoughts or images to the mind. Its real merit may be
best discovered by transposing it into simple prose, and depriving it of
its poetical colouring. If nothing remains, that a man of sense and
reflection would approve, the ode, with the most charming harmony, and
the most splendid colouring, is but a fine dress hung round a man of
straw. How greatly then are those mistaken, who consider an exuberant
fancy, and a delicate ear, as sufficient qualifications for a lyric
poet!
It is only, after having examined the thoughts of a performance in their
unadorned state, that we can pronounce whether the attire, in which they
have been dressed by art, fits, and becomes well or ill. A thought whose
value and merit cannot be estimated, but from its dress, is, in effect,
as futile and insignificant as a man who affects to display his merit by
external pomp.
[[Source:
Original (English translation): A General Theory of the Polite Arts,
delivered in single Articles, and digested according to the
Alphabetical Order of their technical Terms. By John George Sulzer,
Fellow of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin.
Possible sources:
1774: _The Critical review: or, Annals of literature_, Volume 38,
ed. Tobias George Smollett
1774: The Monthly Miscellany, 1774.
1790: _The New magazine of knowledge concerning Heaven and Hell_,
Vol. I. This seems the most likely direct source.]]
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