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This was the all-important homo additus naturae part of Boswell's work: the setting his subject in the light of his own imaginative and emotional insight. But there was more than that. Boswell had not only the temperament of the artist: he had an artist's craftsmanship.
So Pope's Homer is not Homer, the thing in itself, the unrelated, absolute Homer, but Pope additus Homero; and it is not Euripides pure and simple which is the true account of certain beautiful modern versions of Euripides, but Euripidi additus Murray. It may be objected that these are all instances from poetry, where the truth aimed at is rather general than particular.
History and biography are, undoubtedly, on a different footing in this respect, just as the artist who calls his picture "Arundel Castle" or "Windermere" is not in the same position of freedom as the painter of an "Evening on the Downs." But the law of homo additus naturae still remains true in this case as in the other, though its application is modified.
Thus, at bottom, there is an identity of nature between the constructive imagination of the mechanic and that of the artist: the difference is only in the end, the means, and the conditions. The formula, Ars homo additus naturae, has been too often restricted to esthetics it should comprehend everything artificial.
Life comes from human personality. Ars est homo additus naturae. Art, that is, is nature seen through a temperament, the facts seen by a particular mind. The landscape into which the painter has put nothing of his own personality is fitter for a surveyor's office than for a picture gallery. The portrait which gives nothing but the sitter's face is as dull as a photograph.
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