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Literary Remains of the Late William Hazlitt
Literary Remains of the Late William Hazlitt Author:William Hazlitt, Thomas Noon Talfourd, Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ESSAY XII. ON THE FINE ARTS. ESSAY XII. ON THE FINE ARTS. The term Fine Arts may be viewed as embracing all those arts in which the powers of imitati... more »on or invention are exerted, chiefly with a view to the production of pleasure by the immediate impression which they make on the mind. But the phrase has of late been restricted to a narrower and more technical signification, namely, to painting, sculpture, engraving, and architecture, which appeal to the eye as the medium of pleasure; and, by way of eminence, to the two first of these arts. In the following observations, I shall adopt this limited sense of the term; and shall endeavour to develope the principles upon which the great masters have proceeded, and also to enquire in a more particular manner, into the state andprobable advancement of these arts in this country. The great works of art at present extant, and which may be regarded as models of perfection in their several kinds, are the Greek statues葉he pictures of the celebrated Italian masters葉hose of the Dutch and Flemish schools葉o which we may add the comic productions of our own countryman, Hogarth. These all stand unrivalled in the history of art; and they owe their pre-eminence and perfection to one and the same principle葉he immediate imitation of nature. This principle predominated equally in the classical forms of the antique, and in the grotesque figures of Hogarth: the perfection of art in each arose from the truth and identity of the imitation with the reality; the difference was in the subjects葉here was none in the mode of imitation. Yet the advocates for the ideal system of art would persuade their disciples that the difference between Hogarth and the antique does not consist in the different forms of nature which they imitated, but in this, th...« less