Entirely approve of your defign: but whilft I rejoice in the hope of feeing Enthusiasm thus fuccefsfully attacked in her ftrongest and most formidable holds, I would claim your mercy for her in another quarter; and after having expelled her from her religious dominions, let me intreat you to leave her in the undisturbed enjoyment of her civil poffeffions. To own the truth, I look upon enthusiasm, in all other points but that of religion, to be a very neceffary turn of mind; as indeed it is a vein which nature feems to have marked with more or less strength in the tempers of most men. No matter what the object is, whether bufinefs, pleasures, or the fine arts; whoeverpurfues them to any purpose muft do fo con amore: and inamoratos, you know, of every kind, are all enthufiafts. There is indeed a certain heightening faculty which univerfally prevails through our fpecies, and we are all of us, perhaps, in our feveral favourite purfuits, pretty much in the circumftances of the renowned knight of La Mancha, when he attacked the barber's brazen bafon for Mambrino's golden helmet.

What is Tully's aliquid immenfum infinitumque, which he profeffes to afpire after in oratory, but a piece of true rhetorical Quixotifm? Yet never, I will

SEPT. 1739. venture to affirm, would he have glowed with fo much eloquence, had he been warmed with lefs enthufiafm. I am perfuaded indeed, that nothing great or glorious was ever performed, where this quality had not a principal concern; and as our paffions add vigour to our actions, enthufiafm gives fpirit to our paffions. I might add too, that it even opens and enlarges our capacities. Accordingly I have been informed, that one of the great lights of the prefent age never fits down to study, till he has railed his imagination by the power of mufic. For this purpose he has a band of inftruments placed near his library, which play till he finds himself elevated to a proper height; upon which he gives a signal, and they inftantly cease.

But thofe high conceits, which are suggefted by enthusiasm, contribute not only to the pleasure and perfection of the fine arts, but to most other effects of our action and industry. To strike this fpirit therefore out of the human conftitution, to reduce things to their precife philofophical standard, would be to check fome of the main wheels of focicty, and to fix half the world in an uselefs apathy. For if enthusiasm did not add an imaginary value to most of the objects of our purfuit; if fancy did not

give

I should not have fuffered fo long an

interval to interrupt our correfpondence, if my expedition to Euphronius had not wholly employed me for thefe laft fix weeks. I had long promised to fpend fome time with him before he embarked with his regiment for Flanders; and as he is not one of thofe Hudibraftic heroes who chuse to run away one day, that they may live to fight another; I was unwilling to trult the opportunity of feeing him to the very precarious contingency of his return. The high enjoyments he leaves behind him, might, indeed, be a pledge to his friends that his caution would at least be equal to his courage, if his notions of honour were lefs exquifitely delicate. But he will undoubtedly act as if he had nothing to hazard; though at the fame time, from the generous fenfibility of his temper, he feels every thing that his family can fuffer in their fears for his danger. I had an instance, whilft I was in his houfe, how much Euphronia's apprehenfions for his fafety are ready to take álarm upon every occafion. She called me one day into the gallery to look upon a picture which was just come out of the painter's hands; but the moment the carried me up to it, the burst out into a flood of tears. It was drawn at the requeft, and after a defign of her father's, and is a performance which does great honour to the ingenious artist who executed it. Euphronius is reprefented under the character of Hector when he parts from Andromache, who is perfonated in the piece by Euphronia; as her ter, who holds their little boy in her ams, is fhadowed out under the figure

of the beautiful nurfe with the young Aftyanax.

I was fo much pleased with the defign in this uncommon family-piece, that I thought it deferved particular mention; as I could wish it were to become a general fashion to have all pictures of the fame kind executed in fome fuch manner. If, instead of furnishing a room with separate portraits, a whole family were to be thus introduced into a fingle piece, and reprefented under fome interesting hiftorical fubject, fuitable to their rank and character; portraits, which are now fo generally and fo defervedly despised, might become of real value to the public. By this means hiftory-painting would be encouraged among us, and a ridiculous vanity turned to the improvement of one of the most instructive, as well as the moft pleafing, of the imitative arts. Thofe who never contributed a single benefit to their own age, nor will ever be mentioned in any after-one, might by this means employ their pride and their expence in a way, which might render them entertaining and ufseful both to the prefent and future times. It would require, indeed, great judgment and addrefs in the painter, to chufe and recommend fubject's proper to the various characters which would prefent themfelves to his pencil; and undoubt edly we fhould fee many enormous abLurdities committed, if this fashion were univerfally to be followed. It would certainly, however, afford a glorious fcope to genius; and probably fupply us, in due time, with fome productions which might be mentioned with thofe of the moit celebrated schools. I am perfuad

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