It Is But A Poor Eloquence Which

Grandeur Of Effect Is Produced By Two Different Ways Which Seem Entirely Opposed To Each Other. One Is By Reducing The Colors To Little More Than Chiaroscuro... And The Other, By Making The Colors Very Distinct And Forcible... But Still, The Presiding Principle Of Both Those Manners Is Simplicity.

Could We Teach Taste Or Genius By Rules, They Would Be No Longer Taste And Genius.

It Is Impossible That Anything Will Be Well Understood Or Well Done That Is Taken Into A Reluctant Understanding, And Executed With A Servile Hand.

Invention Strictly Speaking, Is Little More Than A New Combination Of Those Images Which Have Been Previously Gathered And Deposited In The Memory; Nothing Can Come From Nothing.

Poetry Operates By Raising Our Curiosity, Engaging The Mind By Degrees To Take An Interest In The Event, Keeping That Event Suspended, And Surprising At Last With An Unexpected Catastrophe. The Painter's Art Is More Confined, And Has Nothing That Corresponds With, Or Perhaps Is Equivalent To, This Power And Advantage Of Leading The Mind On, Till Attention Is Totally Engaged. What Is Done By Painting, Must Be Done At One Blow; Curiosity Has Received At Once All The Satisfaction It Can Ever Have.