clusion of the Twelfth Discourse is, I think, however, a triumphant and unanswerable denunciation of his own favourite paradox on the objects and study of art.
“Those artists” (he says with a strain of eloquent truth) “who have quitted the service of nature (whose service, when well understood, is perfect freedom) and have put themselves under the direction of I know not what capricious fantastical mistress, who fascinates and overpowers their whole mind, and from whose dominion there are no hopes of their being ever reclaimed (since they appear perfectly satisfied, and not at all conscious of their forlorn situation) like the transformed followers of Comus,
But boast themselves more comely than before.
“Methinks, such men, who have found out so short a path, have no reason to complain of the shortness of life and the extent of art; since life is so much longer than is wanted for their improvement, or is indeed necessary for
before him; and in his impatience of each, to have been betrayed into a tissue of inconsistencies somewhat difficult to unravel.
