Mr. Burke very justly observes, "that a true artist should put a generous deceit on the spectators, and effect the noblest designs by easy methods. Designs that are vast only by their dimensions, are always the sign of a common and low imagination. No work of art can be great, but as it deceives;* to be otherwise is the prerogative of nature only."-Essay on the Sublime, Part II, Section 10.
*[This is unquestionably a false principle, though laid down by so great a master. It is possible, indeed, that Burke may have intended it to be taken in some sense which we do not clearly perceive; but whether we consider it as an isolated sentence, or take it in connexion with what goes before and after in the "Essay on the Sublime," &c., it appears to us alike false. A marble statue is a work of art, and one which all allow to be great; but in what respect does it deceive? If coloured so as to resemble nature, it might possibly "deceive," and be mistaken at a distance for a living being; but it would cease immediately to be admired as a work of art, and be looked on as an attempt to deceive the spectator, by making him believe it a work of nature. If, by the word "great," the idea of magnitude is intended, the principle appears to us to be equally false. The Doric columns at the London entrance to the Birmingham Railway, and St. Paul's Cathedral, are, undoubtedly, great objects-that is, objects of great magnitude; the columns are great as compared with other columns, and St. Paul's is great as compared with other churches; but surely they are not the less great to those who know their real height, than to those who are ignorant of it, or who imagine it to be greater than it is. J. C. L.]
