“My good sir, I am never cutting!” smirked Soaper. “My dear Snarl,” whined he, “give us the benefit of your practiced judgment. Do justice to this ad-mirable work of art,” drawled the traitor.
“I will!” said Mr. Snarl; and placed himself before the picture.
“What on earth will he say?” thought Triplet. “I can see by his face he has found us out.”
Mr. Snarl delivered a short critique. Mr. Snarl's intelligence was not confined to his phrases; all critics use intelligent phrases and philosophical truths. But this gentleman's manner was very intelligent; it was pleasant, quiet, assured, and very convincing. Had the reader or I been there, he would have carried us with him, as he did his hearers; and as his successors carry the public with them now.
“Your brush is by no means destitute of talent, Mr. Triplet,” said Mr. Snarl. “But you are somewhat deficient, at present, in the great principles of your art; the first of which is a loyal adherence to truth. Beauty itself is but one of the forms of truth, and nature is our finite exponent of infinite truth.”
His auditors gave him a marked attention. They could not but acknowledge that men who go to the bottom of things like this should be the best instructors.
“Now, in nature, a woman's face at this distance—ay, even at this short distance—melts into the air. There is none of that sharpness; but, on the contrary, a softness of outline.” He made a lorgnette of his two hands; the others did so too, and found they saw much better—oh, ever so much better! “Whereas yours,” resumed Snarl, “is hard; and, forgive me, rather tea-board like. Then your chiaro scuro, my good sir, is very defective; for instance, in nature, the nose, intercepting the light on one side the face, throws, of necessity, a shadow under the eye. Caravaggio, Venetians generally, and the Bolognese masters, do particular justice to this. No such shade appears in this portrait.”
“'Tis so, stop my vitals!” observed Colley Cibber. And they all looked, and, having looked, wagged their heads in assent—as the fat, white lords at Christie's waggle fifty pounds more out for a copy of Rembrandt, a brown levitical Dutchman, visible in the pitch-dark by some sleight of sun Newton had not wit to discover.
Soaper dissented from the mass.
“But, my dear Snarl, if there are no shades, there are lights, loads of lights.”