What right had he to cram into that small space all the marks which
nature had spread over a far larger one?"
"Why not, again, if he diminished the marks in proportion?"
"Just what neither he nor any man could do, without making them so
small as to be invisible, save under a microscope: and the result was,
that he had caricatured every wrinkle, as his friend has in those
horrible knuckles of Shem's wife. Besides, I deny utterly your
assertion that one is bound to paint what is there. On that very
fallacy are they all making shipwreck."
"Not paint what is there? And you are the man who talks of art being
highest when it copies nature."
"Exactly. And therefore you must paint, not what is there, but what
you see there. They forget that human beings are men with two eyes,
and not daguerreotype lenses with one eye, and so are contriving and
striving to introduce into their pictures the very defect of the
daguerreotype which the stereoscope is required to correct."
"I comprehend. They forget that the double vision of our two eyes
gives a softness, and indistinctness, and roundness, to every
outline."
"Exactly so; and therefore, while for distant landscapes, motionless,
and already softened by atmosphere, the daguerreotype is invaluable
(I shall do nothing else this summer but work at it), yet for taking
portraits, in any true sense, it will be always useless, not only for
the reason I just gave, but for another one which the pre-Raphaelites
have forgotten.
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