I found the beginning of "Reading in Detail" highly reminiscent of Gilpin's sense of the Picturesque. I wrote in my one of my blog posts about how I felt that Gilpin was admonishing the individual throughout "Observations on a River Wye." It was pretty evident, especially by Gilpin's repeated use of the term "deformity" that he felt that the Picturesque was something general and something to be taken as a whole, for most of the deformities he referred to were individual items that strayed away from their general counterparts. 

I can understand how Reynolds sees that detail and detailism can ruin the grandeur of nature and, in relevance to this discussion, the picturesque. Just like with anything of great magnitude, it is the first impression of something as a whole that communicates grandeur. Take that whole apart, break it into its individual, insignificant components, and the grandeur is lost. While I don't necessarily agree with Reynolds, I see the logic behind his argument (and maybe as a woman, it's inevitable that I don't agree, according to the article). I can also see the relationship between this thought and Plato/Aristotle, who were both concerned more about (respectively) essence rather than substance, the one over the many, quality versus quantity. 

The idea that The Sublime is beautiful as a general thing is something I think is reflective of the time. It is, I believe, why Realism (and the explication of the ugly of everyday life) and the significance of the individual in literature and art didn't rise in significance until later. Personally, I believe in the grandeur of both, of the whole and its parts--more so in the parts. For the parts can survive without the whole; it is the whole the is completely reliant on the details that compose it.