in such subjects alone that our artists transgress Sir Joshua's
rule; we too often see portraits where the dress and
accessaries obtrude--there is too much lace and too little
expression--and our painters of views follow the fashion most
unaccountably--ornament is every where; we have not a town
where the houses are not "turned out of windows," and all the
furniture of every kind piled up in the streets; and as if to
show a pretty general bankruptcy, together with the artist's
own poverty, you would imagine an auction going on in every
other house, by the Turkey carpets and odds and ends hanging
from the windows. We have even seen a "Rag Fair" in a turnpike
road.

Novelty, Variety, and Contrast are required in Art, because they are the
natural springs that move the mind to attention from its indolent
quiescence; but having moved, their duty is performed--the mind of
itself will do the rest; they must not act prominent parts. In every
work there must be a simplicity which binds the whole together, as a
whole; and whatever comes not within that girdle of the graces, is worse
than superfluous--it draws off and distracts the attention which should
be concentrated. Besides that simplicity which we have spoken of--and we
have used the word in its technical sense, as that which keeps together
and makes one thing of many parts--there is a simplicity which is best
known by its opposite, affectation; upon this Sir Joshua enlarges.
"Simplicity, being a negative virtue, cannot be described or defined."
But it is possible, even in avoiding affectation, to convert simplicity
into the very thing we strive to avoid. N. Poussin--whom, with regard to
this virtue, he contrasts with others of the French school--Sir Joshua
considers, in his abhorrence of the affectation of his countrymen,
somewhat to approach it, by "what in writing would be called pedantry."