(1) Everything tends to show the manner in which a great artist
is formed. If any person could claim an exemption from the careful
imitation of individual objects, it was Nicolas Poussin. He studied
the antique, but he also studied nature. 'I have often admired,' says
Vignuel do Marville, who knew him at a late period of his life, 'the
love he had for his art. Old as he was, I frequently saw him among the
ruins of ancient Rome, out in the Campagna, or along the banks of the
Tyber, sketching a scene that had pleased him; and I often met him with
his handkerchief full of stones, moss, or flowers, which he carried
home, that he might copy them exactly from nature. One day I asked him
how he had attained to such a degree of perfection as to have gained
so high a rank among the great painters of Italy? He answered, "I HAVE
NEGLECTED NOTHING."'--_See his Life lately published._ It appears from
this account that he had not fallen into a recent error, that Nature
puts the man of genius out. As a contrast to the foregoing description,
I might mention, that I remember an old gentleman once asking Mr. West
In the British Gallery if he had ever been at Athens? To which the
President made answer, No; nor did he feel any great desire to go; for
that he thought he had as good an idea of the place from the Catalogue
as he could get by living there for any number of years. What would he
have said, if any one had told him he could get as good an idea of the
subject of one of his great works from reading the Catalogue of it, as
from seeing the picture itself? Yet the answer was characteristic of the
genius of the painter.
(2) Poussin has repeated this subject more than once, and appears to
have revelled in its witcheries. I have before alluded to it, and may
again. It is hard that we should not be allowed to dwell as often as we
please on what delights us, when things that are disagreeable recur so
often against our will.