THE TRANSLATOR cannot allow the present opportunity to pass without returning his sincere thanks to his friend and principal, DR. BURBIDGE, not only for the preface he has written, but also for very kind assistance received in the re vision and correction of the text. INTRODUCTION. THE poles between which Esthetic criticism has always oscillated, and will continue to oscillate, are Form and Expression,-the objective and the subjective truths involved in Art, as in every other production of the human mind. A very ingenious and eloquent writer of the present day has had weight enough (between his reason and his passion) to bring the balance far down in the latter direction: the more need therefore to bring forward an older writer, whose learning is as decidedly, though less vehemently, the other way. There is a use, however, to be served, by drawing notice, in the present state of things, to a writer of the former school, greater than the mere momentary dressing of a balance, never fated to maintain more than a momentary equilibrium. These variations, referring as they do to permanent distinctions, must be expected to continue. Nor, however far the study of art may be carried, can we expect that it will reach a point at which it will become an exact science, independent of the bias in the direction of objective or subjective truth existing in the critic's own mind. It is not, therefore, as contesting the views of Mr. Ruskin, that I venture to call attention to this treatise of Lessing. na se who te erste altoge But the service ascer W Aris But a true purpose may be served by simply bringing the converse truth into the same field with that on which our eyes are at present almost exclusively fixed. The caricatures of the PreRaphaelites have already done some intentional and also some unintended service to Art. By exhibiting the reigning doctrine in its full and almost unmitigated results, while they have clearly shewn (as I frankly admit them to have done) the truth on which it is founded, they have as distinctly, and it may be feared to the general public more impressively, exhibited its inability to fulfil the mind's requirements of Art without the aid of a counter and modifying principle. It is therefore no undesirable thing to supply so fair and acute an exponent of that counter truth as Lessing is, even if it were only to give an |