Some Account liii
sentation of which, or even by the endeavour
to give such a representation, the painter
cannot but improve in his art. - - -
“ My principal labour was employed on
the whole together;33 and I was never weary
of changing, and trying different modes and
different effects. I had always some scheme
33 This also, if I recollect right, is said to have been the
principal object of Correggio ; and, however toilsome,
is in various places strongly recommended by our author.
“ A steady attention to the general effect, (as he has ob-
served in his fourteenth Discourse,) takes up more time,
and is much more laborious to the mind, than any mode
of high finishing, or smoothness, without such attention.’*
Again in the eleventh Discourse :
“ There is nothing in our art which enforces such con-
tinued exertion and circumspection, as an attention to the
general effect of the whole, It requires much study and
much practice ; it requires the painter’s entire mind ;
whereas the parts may be finishing by nice touches,
while his mind is engaged on other matters : he may even
hear a play or a novel read, without much disturbance.
The Artist who flatters his own indolence, will continu-
ally find himself evading this active exertion, and applying
his thoughts to the ease and laziness of highly finishing
the parts ; producing at last what Cowley calls-- "labo-
rious effects of idleness,”