From each cold clime of pride that glimmering lies, He assumes without farther ceremony the charac ter of a connoisseur, and expresses upon all occasions a laudable contempt for the ignorance of the profession. Were that profound critic, and formidable asailant of the judgment of artists, Mr. Daniel Webb, to indulge the world in the present day with his lucubrations, he would have little reason to observe, "That nothing is a greater hindrance to our advances in art than the high opinion we form of the judgment of its professors, and the proportionable diffidence of our own*." He would be charmed to find how completely this obstruction to science of connoisseurship has been removed; how very little a diffidence of their own judgment" operates on the Webbs of the day. To this happy effect he certainly contributed both by precept and example; he inculcated no respect for the persons or opinion of * Inquiry into the beauties of painting. Dial. II. artists, who according to his polite and discriminating expression, "seldom, like gentlemen and scholars, rise to an unprejudiced and liberal contemplation of true beauty," and in a work, (the best parts of which Winkleman roundly asserted to be taken from a manuscript, communicated to him by Mengs the painter) he with equal modesty and liberality declares, that "a sketch from his pen, rude as it is, will carry with it more of the true features of the original, than any you could collect from the writings of our painter, or the authority of our Ciceronis* !!!" " Quid dignum tanto feret hic primessor hiatu ?” Let it be remembered, however, that these sentiments have proceeded from a "subtilis veterum judex," who talks of "the splendid impositions of Ruben's, and the caricatures of Michael Angelot.” *Winkleman, in a letter, quoted in the memoirs of the life of Mengs, says of Webb's book: "Ce qu'il y de meilleur dans ce livre est tiré, d'un manuscrit sur la peinture que Mengs commu nica a l'auteur, que j'ai beacoup connu, cependant le Fat ose avancer, qu'il n'y a point de peintre que soit en-etat de faire parler meme, les observations qu'il donne tandis que cest de Mengs qu'il a emprunté ces observations." To oppose the annihilating dictum of this trenchant critic respecting these two great artists, we have only the vulgar tes timony and tasteless admiration of such men as Reynolds and Fuzeli. There is much justice in the above severe satire on the conduct of our nobility, who have ever been prone to encourage foreigners. Since the establishment, however, of the British institution, for the exhibition and sale of the works of British. artists, the cause of complaint has become less serious. It is with regret we hear, that the University of Cambridge has commissioned a sculptor in a foreign country to make a design for a monument to be erected to Mr. Pitt. Note by the Editor, The conduct of his Majesty, on all occasions in which the fine ats are concerned, is of a very different description, as is evinced in the following anecdote:-On the restoration of the chapel at Greenwich, after it had been destroyed by fire, the committee, one of whose duties it became to superintend that work, and who, like the sagacious Cantabs, were disposed and to -to prize all countries---but their own;" "Find wit, and art, and taste, and genius giv'n proposed that the Altar-piece should be painted at Rome. This proposition being submitted to the king, his majesty indignantly interdicted its being carried into effect, declaring, that while his native country contained so much brilliant genius, and such conspicuous talent in the fine arts, he would never give his sanction to the employment of a foreign pencil. ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. Since the Publication of our fourth Volume, we have received the following Articles from different Correspondents. We shall consider them as an earnest of future favours, and shall give them insertion with the simple observation that such pieces will ever find a welcome reception in the FLOWERS OF LITERATURE. CRITICAL THOUGHTS ON THE STYLE OF RUBENS. By Wm. Carey, Esq. THE vigorous mind of Rubens was decidedly evinced by the choice he made at his first outset. Versatile and fiery, he felt his own comprehensive powers, while his study of their works proved his reverence of the great Italian masters. His boundless ambition could ill brook the imputation of scholastic imitation With him originality and fame were synonimous. If he had formed his style either upon the antique, or on the style of Michael Angelo, of Raphael, or of Titiano, the lustre of his name must have been lost among a herd of imitators. The composite style. which claims a subordinate originality, by borrowing from all without servility, and adding something equally fine of its own, was pre-occupied by the Carraccis, who obtained celebrity by the tempered and fascinating graces of the Bolognian school. There remained to Rubens no alternative but that of appearing as an imitator of imitators, a sort of humble train-bearer to others, last in the procession of fame, or of seizing upon originality by a hazardous devia-" tion from some of the purest principles of taste, and the most established rules of academic science. He boldly chose the latter. After having looked abroad upon the world of art, he looked in upon the mighty mass of materials in his own mind, and there formed that extraordinary style, the style of Rubens, great in its beauties and its faults, unlike all that preceded him, and unequalled by the crowd of his able cotemporaries and followers. The wisdom of his determination was proved by the unequivocal success with which it was attended. By relying upon himself, he became the founder of the last great school of historical painting, and a model for imitation, no less valued, copied, and celebrated, than the most illustrious of his predecessors. The enterprise with which he pursued his object, can only be judged of by a view of the sacrifices which he risked to obtain it. Purity of outline, nobleness of forms, the grace and beauty of single, particularly of female figures, dignity of character, |