TWO:Painting, like architecture, was at a very low ebb during this period, with one or two brilliant exceptions. Foreign artists were in demand, and there was no native talent, except that of Thornhill and Hogarth, which could claim to be unjustly overlooked in that preference. Sir Peter Lely was still living, but Sir Godfrey Kneller, another foreigner, was already taking his place. Kneller was a German, born at Lübeck, and educated under the best Flemish masters of the day. As he had chosen portrait-painting as his department, he hastened over to England after a visit to Rome and Venice, as the most profitable field for his practice, and being introduced to Charles II. by the Duke of Monmouth, he became at once the fashion. Kneller had talents of the highest order, and, had not his passion for money-making been still greater, he would have taken rank with the great masters; but, having painted a few truly fine pictures, he relied on them to secure his fame, and commenced an actual manufacture of portraits for the accumulation of money. Like Rubens, he sketched out the main figure, and painted the head and face, leaving his pupils to fill in all the rest. He worked with wonderful rapidity, and had figures often prepared beforehand, on which he fitted heads as they were commissioned. Sir John Medina, a Fleming, was the chief manufacturer of ready-made figures and postures for him, the rest filled in the draperies and backgrounds. Kneller had a bold, free, and vigorous hand, painting with wonderful rapidity, and much of the grace of Vandyck, but only a few of his works show what he was capable of. The beauties of the Court of William and Mary, which may be seen side by side with those of the Court of Charles II. by Lely at Hampton Court, are far inferior to Lely's.Corresponding to the universal space which contains all particular spaces, there was, in the Neo-Platonic system, a universal Thought which contained all particular thoughts,the Nous about which we heard so much in studying Plotinus.405 Such a conception is utterly strange to the modern mind, but it was familiar enough to Spinoza; and we can see how it would be suggested by the common forms of reasoning. The tendency of syllogism is either to subsume lower under higher notions until a summum genus is reached, or to resolve all subjects into a single predicate, or to connect all predicates with a single subject. The analogies of space, too, would tell in the same direction, bringing nearer the idea of a vast thought-sea in which all particular thoughts, or what to a Cartesian meant the same thing, all particular minds, were contained. And Neo-Platonism showed how this universal Mind or Thought could, like the space which it so much resembled, be interpreted as the product of a still higher principle. To complete the parallelism, it remained to show that Thought, which before had seemed essentially finite, is, on the contrary, co-infinite with Extension. How this was done will appear a little further on.
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