Note 125 — THE ART OF PAINTING;

The passage alluded to is in Aristotle’s “Treatise on Poetry,” in which he accounts for the pleasure afforded by the imitative arts, by observing, that “to learn is a natural pleasure.” “To the same purpose (says Mr Twining,) in his ‘Rhetorick,’ lib. i. cap. xi. p. 537. edit. Duval. Επει δε το μανθανειν, κ. τ. λ. ‘And as it is by nature delightful to learn, to admire, and the like, hence we necessarily receive pleasure from imitative arts, as painting, sculpture, and poetry, and from whatever is well imitated, even though the original may be disagreeable; but our pleasure does not arise from the beauty of the thing itself, but from the inference, the discovery that this is that, &c. so that we seem to learn something.’

“Μανθανειν—to learn, to know, i.e. merely to recognize, discover, &c.,” See Harris, On Music, Painting, &c. ch. iv. note (b). The meaning is sufficiently explained by what follows.

“Dryden, who scarce ever mentions Aristotle without discovering that he had looked only at the wrong side of the tapestry, (a translation,) says, ‘Aristotle tells us, that imitation pleases, because it affords matter for a reasoner to inquire into the truth or falsehood of imitation,’ &c. But Aristotle is not here speaking of reasoners, or inquiry, but, on the contrary, of the vulgar, the generality of mankind, whom he expressly opposes to philosophers, or reasoners: and his συλλογιζεσθαι is no more than that rapid, habitual, and imperceptible act of the mind, that ‘raisonnement aussi prompt que le coup d’œil,’ (as it is well paraphrased by M. Batteux,) by which we collect or infer, from a comparison of the picture with the image of the original in our minds, that it was intended to represent that original.

“The fullest illustration of this passage is to be found in another work of Aristotle, his ‘Rhetoric,’ lib. iii. cap. x. where he applies the same principle to metaphorical language, and resolves the pleasure we receive from such language, into that which arises from the μαθησις ΤΑΧΕΙΑ, the exercise of our understandings in discovering the meaning by a quick and easy perception of some quality, or qualities, common to the thing expressed, and the thing intended; to a mirror, for example, and to the theatre, when the latter is called metaphorically, the mirror of human life.

“Dryden (Mr Twining further observes) seems to have taken his idea from Dacier’s note on this place, (in the ‘Treatise on Poetry,’) which is extremely confused, and so expressed, as to leave it doubtful whether he misunderstood the original, or only explained himself awkwardly. The use that Dryden made of French critics and translators is well known.” Aristotle’s Treatise on Poetry, translated, with Notes. &c. by Thomas Twining, A. M. 4to, 1789, p. 186.—Malone.