ESSAY XIV.
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.
The first inquiry which runs through Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses is whether the student ought to look at nature with his own eyes or with the eyes of others, and on the whole, he apparently inclines to the latter. The second question is what is to be understood by nature; whether it is a general and abstract idea, or an aggregate of particulars; and he strenuously maintains the former of these positions. Yet it is not easy always to determine how far or with what precise limitations he does so.
The first germ of his speculations on this subject is to be found in two papers in the Idler. In the last paragraph of the second of these, he says:
“If it has been proved that the painter, by attending to the invariable and general ideas of nature, produces beauty, he must, by regarding minute particularities and accidental
