We have no right to assume that he meant
the _weakest_. For it is true, that in order to succeed in the
Dutch style, a man has need of qualities of mind eminently deliberate
and sustained. He must be possessed of patience rather than of power;
and must feel no weariness in contemplating the expression of a single
thought for several months together. As opposed to the changeful
energies of the imagination, these mental characters may be properly
spoken of as under the general term--slowness of intellect. But it by
no means follows that they are necessarily those of weak or foolish
men.
We observe, however, farther, that the imitation which Reynolds
supposes to be characteristic of the Dutch School is that which gives
to objects such relief that they seem real, and that he then speaks of
this art of realistic imitation as corresponding to _history_ in
literature.
Reynolds, therefore, seems to class these dull works of the Dutch
School under a general head, to which they are not commonly
referred--that of _historical_ painting; while he speaks of the works
of the Italian School not as historical, but as _poetical_ painting.
His next sentence will farther manifest his meaning.
"The Italian attends only to the invariable, the great and general
ideas which are fixed and inherent in universal Nature; the Dutch, on
the contrary, to literal truth and a minute exactness in the detail,
as I may say, of Nature modified by accident.
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