both as to lines and grouping, is so distinct, both in character and form, from the surrounding figures, as to render them a distinct people, and their very air reminds us of another age.  We cannot but believe we should have had a very different group, and far superior in expression, had he given us a conception of his own.  It would at least have been in accordance with the rest, animated with the superstitious enthusiasm of the surrounding crowd; and especially as sacrificing Priests would they have been amazed and awe-stricken in the living presence of a god, instead of personating, as in the present group, the cold officials of the Temple, going through a stated task at the shrine of their idol.  In the figure by Poussin, which he borrowed from Michael Angelo, the discrepancy is still greater.  The original figure, which was in the Cartoon at Pisa, (now known only by a print,) is that of a warrior who has been suddenly roused from the act of bathing by the sound of a trumpet; he has just leaped upon the bank, and, in his haste to obey its summons, thrusts his foot through his garment.  Nothing could be more appropriate than the violence of this action; it is in unison with the hurry and bustle of the occasion.  And this is the figure which Poussin (without the slightest change, if we recollect aright) has transferred to the still and solemn scene in which John baptizes the Saviour.  No one can look at this figure without suspecting the plagiarism.  Similar instances may be found in his other works; as in the Plague of the Philistines, where the Alcibiades of Raffaelle is coolly sauntering among the dead and dying, and with as little relation to the infected multitude as if he were still with Socrates in the School of Athens.  In the same picture may be found also one of the Apostles from the Cartoon of the Draught of Fishes:  and we may naturally ask what business he has there.  And yet such appropriations have been made to appear no thefts, simply because no attempt seems to have been made at concealment!  But theft, we must be allowed to think, is still theft, whether committed in the dark, or in the face of day.  And the example is a dangerous one, inasmuch as it comes from men who were not constrained to resort to such shifts by any poverty of invention.

Akin to this is another and larger kind of borrowing, which, though it cannot strictly be called copying; yet so evidently betrays a foreign origin, as to produce the same effect.  We allude to the adoption of the peculiar lines, handling, and disposition of masses, &c., of any particular master.

[4] First printed in 1821, in “The Idle Man,” No.  II p. 38.

[5] A feigned name.—­Editor.