of painters is called Invention, which includes not only the composition, or the putting the whole together, and the disposition of every individual part, but likewise the management of the back-ground, the effect of light and shadow, and the attitude of every figure or animal that is introduced or makes a part of the work.

Composition, which is the principal part of the Invention of a painter, is by far the greatest difficulty he has to encounter. Every man that can paint at all, can execute individual parts; but to keep those parts in due subordination as relative to a whole, requires a comprehensive view of the art, that more strongly implies genius, than perhaps any other quality whatever.

NOTE XIII. VERSE 119.

Vivid and faithful to the historic p

Express the customs, manners, forms, and age.

R.

Though the painter borrows his subject, he considers his art as not subservient to any other. His business is something more than assisting the Historian with explanatory figures: as soon as he takes it into his hands, he adds, retrenches, transposes, and moulds it anew, till it is made fit for his own art; he avails himself of the privileges allowed to Poets and Painters, and dares every thing to accomplish his end, by means corres

pondent to that end-to impress the spectator with the same interest at the sight of his representation, as the poet has contrived to impress on the reader by his description: the end is the same in both cases, though the means are and must be different. Ideas intended to be conveyed to the mind by oue sense, cannot always, with equal success, be conveyed by another: our author therefore has recommended to us elsewhere to be attentive

"On what may aid our art, and what destroy." v. 598. Even the historian takes great liberties with facts, in order to interest his readers, and make his narration more delightful; much greater right has the painter to do this, who though his work is called History-Painting, gives in reality a poetical representation of events.

NOTE XIV. VERSE 121.

Nor paint conspicuous on the foremost plain
Whate'er is false, impertinent, or vain.

R.

This precept, so obvious to common sense, appears superfluous, till we recollect that some of the greatest painters have been guilty of a breach of it: for, not to mention Paolo Veronese or Rubens, whose principles, as ornamental painters, would allow great latitude in introducing animals, or whatever they might think necessary, to con

trast or make the composition more picturesque, we can no longer wonder why the Poet has thought it worth setting a guard against this impropriety, when we find that such men as Raffaelle and the Caracci, in their greatest and most serious works, have introduced on the foreground mean and frivolous circumstances.

Such improprieties, to do justice to the more modern painters, are seldom found in their works. The only excuse that can be made for those great artists, is their living in an age when it was the custom to mix the ludicrous with the serious, and when poetry as well as painting gave in to this fashion.

R.

NOTE XV. VERSE 125.

This rare, this arduous task no rules can teach. This must be meant to refer to Invention, and not to the precepts immediately preceding; which relating only to the mechanical disposition of the work, cannot be supposed to be out of the reach of the rules of art, or not to be acquired but by the assistance of supernatural power,

NOTE XVI. VERSE 128.

R.

Prometheus ravish'd from the Car of Day. After the lines in the original of this passage, there comes in one of a proverbial cast, taken from

Horace*: "Non uti Dædaliam licet omnibus ire Corinthum." I could not introduce a version of this with any grace into the conclusion of the sentence; and indeed I do not think it connects well in the original. It certainly conveys no truth of importance, nor adds much to what went before it. I suppose, therefore, I shall be pardoned for having taken no notice of it in my translation.

Mr. Ray, in his collection of English proverbs, brings this of Horace as a parallel to a ridiculous English one, viz. Every man's nose will not make a shoeing-horn. It is certain, were a proverb here introduced, it ought to be of English growth to suit an English translation; but this, alas! would not fit my purpose, and Mr. Ray gives us no other. I hold myself, therefore, excusable, for leaving the line untranslated.

NOTE XVII. VERSE 433.

Till all complete the gradual wonder shone, And vanquish'd Nature own'd herself outdone. In strict propriety, the Grecian statues only excel nature by bringing together such an assemblage of beautiful parts as Nature was never known to bestow on one object:

For earth-born graces sparingly impart

The symmetry supreme of perfect art. v. 68.

* Horace's line runs thus. (Epistle 17, Book I. line 36,) Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum.

M.

It must be remembered, that the component parts of the most perfect statue never can excel nature that we can form no idea of beauty beyond her works: we can only make this rare assemblage; an assemblage so rare, that if we are to give the name of monster to what is uncommon, we might, in the words of the Duke of Buckingham, call it

A faultless monster which the world ne'er saw. R.

NOTE XVIII. VERSE 145.

Learn then from Greece, ye youths, Proportion's law, Inform'd by her, each just position draw.

Du Piles has, in his note on this passage, given the measures of a human body, as taken by Fresnoy from the statues of the ancients, which are here transcribed:

"The ancients have commonly allowed eight heads to their figures, though some of them have but seven; but we ordinarily divide the figures into ten faces ;* that is to say, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, in the following

manner:

"From the crown of the head to the forehead is the third part of a face.

*This depends upon the age and quality of the persons. The Apollo and Venus of Medicis have more than ten faces.

R.