button to main menu  Gents Mag 1834 part 1 p.141
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Gentleman's Magazine 1834 part 1 p.141

  Thomas Green
  William Gilpin
Thomas Green on William Gilpin

Thomas Green's diary for 23 October 1801 - comments on William Gilpin.
Diary of a Lover of Literature.
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Oct. 23. Finished Gilpin's Observations on the Lakes of Cumberland, &c. In the 16th Section he maintains that masterly but unfinished sketches please beyond finished performances, because "they leave to the imagination the power of creating something more;" and not, as Burke affirms, "from the promise of something more in themselves." The difference does not appear very material; both mean that the imagination is stimulated to supply what is not represented. In the 18th Section he contends that beauty and sublimity are both mingled in Ullswater Lake, without destroying each other, as Burke predicts they must. The mediation of Price's doctrine of the picturesque seems adapted to set the whole right. Delighted as I am with Gilpin, I begin to think that for purposes of liberal gratification he views nature too exclusively with an artist's eye, and thus deprives of just praise, many grand and striking scenes in his Tour, while he overrates others. His sketches by no means correspond to the refinement of his ideas; and they are any thing but portraits of the places. Some of his little historical digressions are eminently pleasing; they are judiciously introduced, and most gracefull treated.
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