Previous Page Close Next Page

fol. 78r   [fol. 77v is blank] 	'Of Truth of Space … Power of the Eye' (Pt II, Sn II, Ch V)    (3.337-38)  *
      
      
      
     of intensity and fully telling you all about the column and its
     pattern  .    This is not truth . neither -  it is <a beautiful> {an} error on the
     other side .    But take any of Turners pieces of detail - especially among
     his <later pieces> {more recent works} - and you will find in them - that though
     you can tell
 5   no pattern - & make out no line - all the richness .  all the grace -
     and all the character - are felt as truly as from Nature herself .
     and by the means she uses .    Look at the corinthian capital lying
     broken in the Daphne hunt.  Do you see one cut of the Acanthus leaves
     {or} one line of the frieze -   And yet you feel in an instant that all
10   are there.        This is truth - and a degree <of> {&} precision of truth which
     no other artist {ever} approached or conceived.
     And what I have thus shown to be the case with <even> the most delicate
     of the works of man - must take place - and to how greater a
     degree - with every work of Nature herself.    The detail of a single
15   weedy bank laughs the carving of ages to scorn .    Every leaf &
     stalk has a design and tracery upon it - every knot of grass an
     intricacy of shade - which the labour of years could never imitate - & which .
     - if such labour could follow it out to the last fibres of the leaflets - would
     yet be falsely represented - for as in all other the other cases brought forward .
20   it is not clearly seen - but confusedly & mysteriously . That which is
     nearness in a bank - is distance for its details - and however near ^ {it may be} -
     the
     greater part of those details are but a beautiful incomprehensibility.
      

Previous Page Close Next Page

MW