vas, (as Zeuxis is faid to have done when he made a famous picture of Helen *), is a work which one muft poffefs invention and judgement, as well as dexterity, to be able to execute. For it is not by copying the eyes of one lady, the lips of another, and the nofe of a third, that fuch a picture is to be formed; a medley of this kind would probably be ridiculous, as a certain form of feature may fuit one face, which would not fuit another: - but it is by comparing together feveral beautiful mouths, (for example), remarking the peculiar charm of each; and then conceiving an idea of that feature, different perhaps from all, and more perfect than any and thus proceeding through the feveral features, with a view, not only to the colour, fhape, and proportion, of each part, but also to the harmony of the whole. It rarely happens, that an individual is fo complete in any one quality as we could defire; and though it were in the opinion of fome, it would not in that of all. A lover may think his mistress a model of perfection; fhe may have moles and freckles on her face, and an odd caft of her eye; and yet he fhall think all this becoming: but another man fees her in a different light; difcovers many blemishes perhaps, and but few beauties; thinks her too fat or too lean, too fhort or too tall. Now, what would be the confe

* Plin. Hift. Natur. lib. 35.

quence,

quence, if this lady's portrait were to appear in a picture, under the character of Helen or Venus? The lover would admire it; but the rest of the world would wonder at the painter's taste. Great artists have, however, fallen into this error. Rubens, while he was drawing fome of his pieces, would feem to have had but two ideas of feminine loveliness; and those were copied from his two wives: all the world approves his conjugal partiality; but his tafte in female beauty all the world does not approve.

Individual objects there are, no doubt, in nature, which command univerfal admiration. There are many women in Great Britain, whose beauty all the world would acknowledge. Nay, perhaps, there are fome fuch in every nation for, however capricious our taste for beauty may be esteemed by modern philofophers, I have been affured, that in the Weft Indies a female negro feldom paffes for handfome among the blacks, who is not really fo in the opinion of the white people. There are characters in real life, which, with little or no heightening, might make a good figure even in Epic poetry: there are natural landscapes, than which one could not defire any thing of the kind more beautiful. But fuch individuals are not the most common; and therefore, though the rule is not without exceptions, it may, however, be adınitted as a rule, That the poet or painter, who means to adapt himself

to the general tafte, fhould copy after genera. ideas collected from extenfive obfervation of nature. For the most part, the peculiarities of individuals are agreeable only to individuals; the manners of Frenchmen to Frenchmen; the drefs of the feafon to the beaux and belles of the feafon; the fentiments and language of Newmarket, to the heroes of the turf, and their imitators. But manners and fentiments, dreffes and faces, may be imagined, which shall be agreeable to all who have a right to be pleafed: and these it is the business of the imitative artist to invent, and to exhibit.

Yet mere portraits are useful and agreeable and poetry, even when it falls fhort of this philofophical perfection, may have great merit as an inftrument of both inftruction and pleasure. Some minds have no turn to abftract fpeculation, and would. be better pleased with a notion of an individual, than with an idea of a fpecies *; or

with

*Idea, according to the ufage of the Greek philofophers, from whom we have the word, fignifies, "A "thought of the mind which is expreffed by a general "term." Notion is ufed by many English writers of credit to fignify, "A thought of the mind which may "be expreffed by a proper or individual name." Thus, I have a notion of London, but an idea of a city; a notion of a particular hero, but an idea of heroifm. Thefe two words have long been confounded by the best writers but it were to be wifhed, that, as the things are totally different, the names had been fo too. Had this

been

with feeing in an Hiftorical picture or Epic poem, the portraits or characters of their acquaintance, than the fame form of face or difpofition improved into a general idea *. And to moft men, fimple unadorned nature is, at certain times, and in certain compofitions, more agreeable, than the most elaborate improvements of art; as a plain fhort period, without modulation, gives a pleafing variety to a difcourfe. Many fuch portraits of fimple nature there are in the fubordinate parts both of Homer's and of Virgil's poetry: and an excellent effect they have (as was already obferved) in giving probability to the fiction †, as well as in gratifying the reader's fancy with images diftinct and lively, and easily comprehended. The historical plays of Shakespeare raise not our pity and terror to fuch a height, as Lear, Mac

been the cafe, a great deal of confufion peculiar to mo dern philofophy, and arifing from an ambiguous, and almost unlimited, ufe of the word idea, might have been prevented.

* An historical picture, like Weft's Death of Wolfe, in which the faces are all portraits of individual heroes, and the dreffes according to the prefent mode, may be more interesting now, than if thefe had been more picturefque, and thofe expreffive of different modifications of heroifm. But in a future age, when the dreffes are become unfashionable, and the faces no longer known as portraits, is there not reafon to fear, that this excellent piece will lofe of its effect?

L

beth, or Othello; but they interest and inftruct us greatly, notwithstanding. The rudeft of the Eclogues of Theocritus, or even of Spenfer, have by fome authors been extolled above those of Virgil, because more like real life. Nay, Corneille is known to have preferred the Pharfalia to the Eneid, perhaps from its being nearer the truth; or perhaps from the fublime fentiments of Stoical morality fo forcibly and so oftentatiously displayed

in it.

Poets may refine upon nature too much, as well as too little; for affectation and rufticity are equally remote from true elegance.

The style and fentiments of comedy fhould no doubt be more correct and more pointed than thofe of the most polite converfation but to make every footman a wit, and every gentleman and lady an epigrammatift, as Congreve has done, is an exceffive and faulty refinement. The proper medium has been hit by Menander and Terence, by Shakespeare in his happier fcenes, and by Garrick, Cumberland, and fome others of late renown. To defcribe the paffion of love with as little delicacy as fome men fpeak of it, would be unpardonable; but to transform it into mere platonic adoration, is to run into another extreme, lefs criminal indeed, but too remote from univerfal truth to be univerfally interesting. To the former extreme Ovid inclines; and Petrarch, and his imitators, to the latter. Vir