sity of the connoisseur’s knowing in what consists the excellency of each class, in order to judge how near it approaches to perfection.”—Ibid. p. 217.
As he advances, however, he grows bolder, and altogether discards his theory of judging of the artist by the class to which he belongs—“But we have the sanction of all mankind,” he says, “in preferring genius in a lower rank of art to feebleness and insipidity in the highest.” This is in speaking of Gainsborough. The whole passage is excellent, and, I should think, conclusive against the general and factitious style of art on which he insists so much at other times.
“On this ground, however unsafe, I will venture to prophesy, that two of the last distinguished Painters of that country, I mean Pompeio Battoni and Rafaelle Mengs, however great their names may at present sound in our ears[1], will very soon fall into the rank of Imperiale, Sebastian Concha, Placido Constanza, Massuccio, and the rest of their immediate predecessors; whose names, though equally renowned in their life-time, are now fallen into what is little short of total oblivion. I do not
- ↑ Written in 1788.
