general declined ever after. This is the peculiar distinction and
privilege of each, of science and of art:--of the one, never to attain
its utmost limit of perfection; and of the other, to arrive at it almost
at once. Homer, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Dante, and Ariosto,
(Milton alone was of a later age, and not the worse for it)--Raphael,
Titian, Michael Angelo, Correggio, Cervantes, and Boccaccio, the Greek
sculptors and tragedians,--all lived near the beginning of their arts
--perfected, and all but created them. These giant-sons of genius stand
indeed upon the earth, but they tower above their fellows; and the long
line of their successors, in different ages, does not interpose any
object to obstruct their view, or lessen their brightness. In strength
and stature they are unrivalled; in grace and beauty they have not been
surpassed. In after-ages, and more refined periods, (as they are called)
great men have arisen, one by one, as it were by throes and at
intervals; though in general the best of these cultivated and artificial
minds were of an inferior order; as Tasso and Pope, among poets; Guido
and Vandyke, among painters. But in the earlier stages of the arts, as
soon as the first mechanical difficulties had been got over, and the
language was sufficiently acquired, they rose by clusters, and in
constellations, never so to rise again!

The arts of painting and poetry are conversant with the world of
thought within us, and with the world of sense around us--with what we
know, and see, and feel intimately. They flow from the sacred shrine of
our own breasts, and are kindled at the living lamp of nature. But the
pulse of the passions assuredly beat as high, the depths and soundings
of the human heart were as well understood three thousand, or three
hundred years ago, as they are at present: the face of nature, and "the
human face divine" shone as bright then as they have ever done. But it
is _their_ light, reflected by true genius on art, that marks out its