PARALLEL BETWEEN POETRY AND PAINTING.

Ir may be reasonably expected, that I should say something on my behalf, in respect to my present undertaking. First then, the reader may be pleased to know, that it was not of my own choice that I undertook this work. Many of our most skilful painters, and other artists, were pleased to recommend this author to me, as one who perfectly understood the rules of painting; who gave the best and most concise instructions for performance, and the surest to inform the judgment of all who loved this noble art; that they who before were rather fond of it, than knowingly admired it, might defend their inclination by their reason; that they might understand those excellencies which they blindly valued, so as not to be further imposed on by bad pieces, and to know when Nature was well imitated by the most able masters. It is true indeed, and they acknowledge it, that, besides the rules which are given in this treatise, or which can be given in any other, to make a perfect judgment of good pictures, and to value them more or less, when compared with another, there is further required a long conversation with the best pieces, which are not very frequent either in France or

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England; yet some we have, not only from the hands of Holbein, Rubens, and Vandyck (one of them is admirable for history-painting, and the other two for portraits), but of many Flemish masters, and those not inconsiderable, though for design not equal to the Italians. And of these latter also, we are not unfurnished with some pieces of Raphael, Titian, Correggio, Michel Angelo, and others. But to return to my own undertaking of this translation; I freely own that I thought myself incapable of performing it, either to their satisfaction, or my own credit. Not but that I understood the original Latin, and the French author perhaps as well as most Englishmen ; but I was not sufficiently versed in the terms of art: and therefore thought that many of those persons, who put this honourable task on me, were more able to perform it themselves, as undoubtedly they were. But they assuring me of their assistance in correcting my faults, where I spoke improperly, I was encouraged to attempt it, that I might not be wanting in what I could, to satisfy the desires of so many gentlemen who were willing to give the world this useful work. They have effectually performed their promise to me, and I have been as careful on my side to take their advice on all things, so that the reader may assure himself of a tolerable translation; not elegant, for I proposed not that to myself, but familiar, clear, and instructive in any of which parts, if I have failed, the fault lies wholly at my door. In this one particular only, I must beg the reader's pardon: the prose translation of the poem is not free from poetical expressions, and I dare not promise that some of

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them are not fustian, or at least highly metaphorical; but, this being a fault in the first digestion, (that is, the original Latin), was not to be remedied in the second, viz. the translation; and I may confidently say, that whoever had attempted it, must have fallen into the same inconvenience, or a much greater, that of a false version. When I undertook this work, I was already engaged in the translation of Virgil, from whom I have borrowed only two months, and am now returning to that which I ought to understand better. In the meantime, I beg the reader's pardon for entertaining him so long with myself; it is an usual part of ill manners in all authors, and almost in all mankind, to trouble others with their business; and I was so sensible of it before-hand, that I had not now committed it, unless some concernments of the readers had been interwoven with my own. But I know not, while I am atoning for one error, if I am not falling into another: for I have been importuned to say something further of this art; and to make some observations on it, in relation to the likeness and agreement which it has with poetry its sister. But before I proceed, it will not be amiss, if I copy from Bellori (a most ingenious author) some part of his idea of a painter, which cannot be unpleasing, at least to such who are conversant in the philosophy of Plato; and, to avoid tediousness, I will not translate the whole discourse, but take and leave, as I find occasion.

"God Almighty, in the fabric of the universe, first contemplated himself, and reflected on his own excellencies; from which he drew and constituted those first forms, which are called ideas, so that

every species which was afterwards expressed was produced from that first idea, forming that wonderful contexture of all created beings. But the celestial bodies above the moon being incorruptible and not subject to change, remained for ever fair and in perpetual order. On the contrary, all things which are sublunary are subject to change, to deformity, and to decay; and though Nature always intends a consummate beauty in her productions, yet through the inequality of the matter, the forms are altered; and in particular human beauty suffers alteration for the worse, as we see to our mortification, in the deformities and disproportions which are in us. For which reason, the artful painter, and the sculptor, imitating the Divine Maker, form to themselves, as well as they are able, a model of the superior beauties; and, reflecting on them, endeavour to correct and amend the common Nature, and to represent it as it was first created, without fault, either in colour or in lineament.

"The idea, which we may call the goddess of painting and of sculpture, descends upon the marble and the cloth, and becomes the original of those arts: and being measured by the compass of the intellect, is itself the measure of the performing hand: and, being animated by the imagination, infuses life into the image. The idea of the painter and the sculptor is undoubtedly that perfect and excellent example of the mind, by imitation of which imagined forms all things are represented which fall under human sight; such is the definition which is made by Cicero, in his book of the Orator, to Brutus. As therefore in forms and figures there is somewhat which is excellent and perfect, to which imagined

species all things are referred by imitation, which are the objects of sight; in like manner we behold the species of eloquence in our minds, the effigies, or actual image of which we seek in the organs of our hearing. This is likewise confirmed by Proclus, in the dialogue of Plato, called Timæus; If, says he, you take a man as he is made by Nature, and compare him with another who is the effect of Art, the work of Nature will always appear the less beautiful, because Art is more accurate than Nature.' But Zeuxis, who, from the choice which he made of five virgins, drew that wonderful picture of Helena, which Cicero, in his Orator before mentioned, sets before us, as the most perfect example of beauty, at the same time admonishes a painter to contemplate the ideas of the most natural forms; and to make a judicious choice of several bodies, all of them the most elegant which we can find: by which we may plainly understand, that he thought it impossible to find in any one body all those perfections which he sought for the accomplishment of a Helena, because Nature in any individual person makes nothing that is perfect in all its parts. For this reason Maximus Tyrius also says, that the image which is taken by a painter from several bodies produces a beauty, which it is impossible to find in any single natural body, approaching to the perfection of the fairest statues. Thus Nature, on this account, is so much inferior to Art, that those artists who propose to themselves only the imitation or likeness of such or such a particular person, without election of those ideas before mentioned, have often been reproached for that omission. Demetrius was taxed for being too natural; Dionysius was also blamed for drawing