Viewing page 24 of 37

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

                                24
tion will not receive the strangers with its characteristic hospitality. No! the nation will not frown them back; nor compel them to seek a shelter in the less genial atmosphere of a despotic courts. 
But, how is this? The Reviewer has objected to my opinions on the ground that the tone which I assumed in relation to the taste in the country will have, "if uncontradicted, a most discouraging effect on the younger artists," and in replying to him, I am found repelling some of his opinions, which strike at the root of all encouragement, and which if believed to be true, and "uncontradicted," would certainly, have a "most discouraging effect," not only on the younger artists but older artists too. The discouragements, to which I alluded before the younger artists, were in their nature temporary and local arising out of the infancy of the arts in the country, and whilst warning them of the difficulties they must expect, I still encouraged those who possessed the real amor artis to persevere in their course from the intrinsic pleasure to be de-rived in the pursuit of their art. The Reviewer, on the other hand, by arraying before the artist the spirit of the age as hostile to all attempts at great excellence in the Fine Arts, and so likely to continue, strikes a fatal blow, (if he can prove his positions) at the very heart of further encouragement.
  The artist, indeed seems not to be very well provided for by the Reviewer, at least so far as regards his bodily wants; he fears to have the artist rich, lest "by taking away the sting of necessity, the promise it would have fostered should be destroyed." This is very much like throwing a man into the water, for the pleasure of seeing him exert that vigour of muscle by saving himself from drowning, which might otherwise be used in benefiting his fellow men. It was some other stimulus of great exertion than the "sting of necessity," which excited the best Greeks in the best ages of the arts. - Polygnotus painted the Poecile for nothing, and Zeuxis gave his pictures away; and Phidias for all his works received a smaller sum than Gorgias for his declamations. These of course must have been independent of their art for subsistence; Raphael and Michael Angelo, and Rubens,