’Tis an abhorrence of barrenness that fills walls and rooms; and pictures void of thought must supply the vacuum.
Hence the artist, abandoned to the dictates of his own fancy, paints, for want of Allegory, perhaps a satire on him to whom he owes his industry; or, to shun this Charybdis, finds himself reduced to paint figures void of any meaning.
Nay, he may often find it difficult to meet even with those, ’till at last
——velut ægri Somnia, vanæ Finguntur Species.
Hor.
Thus Painting is degraded from its most eminent prerogative, the representation of invisible, past and future things.
If pictures be sometimes met with, which might be significant in some particular place, they often lose that property by stupid and wrong applications.
Perhaps the master of some new building
Dives agris, dives positis in fœnore nummis
Hor.