but in painting, such indistinctness would be a defect, and imply that
the artist wanted the power to pourtray the conceptions of his fancy.
Mr. West was of opinion that to delineate a physical form, which in its
moral impression would approximate to that of the visionary Death of
Milton, it was necessary to endow it, if possible, with the appearance
of super-human strength and energy. He has therefore exerted the utmost
force and perspicuity of his pencil on the central figure."--One might
suppose from this, that the way to represent a shadow was to make it as
substantial as possible. Oh, no! Painting has its prerogatives, (and
high ones they are) but they lie in representing the visible, not the
invisible. The moral attributes of Death are powers and effects of an
infinitely wide and general description, which no individual or physical
form can possibly represent, but by a courtesy of speech, or by a
distant analogy. The moral impression of Death is essentially visionary;
its reality is in the mind's eye. Words are here the only _things_; and
things, physical forms, the mere mockeries of the understanding. The
less definite, the less bodily the conception, the more vast, unformed,
and unsubstantial, the nearer does it approach to some resemblance of
that omnipresent, lasting, universal, irresistible principle, which
every where, and at some time or other, exerts its power over all
things. Death is a mighty abstraction, like Night, or Space, or Time. He
is an ugly customer, who will not be invited to supper, or to sit for
his picture. He is with us and about us, but we do not see him. He
stalks on before us, and we do not mind him: he follows us close behind,
and we do not turn to look back at him. We do not see him making faces
at us in our life-time, nor perceive him afterwards sitting in
mock-majesty, a twin-skeleton, beside us, tickling our bare ribs, and
staring into our hollow eye-balls! Chaucer knew this. He makes three
riotous companions go in search of Death to kill him, they meet with an
old man whom they reproach with his age, and ask why he does not die, to