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that can command homage from the eye: and the late Mr. Henry Fielding, who presumed that, in a novel, he could interest the reader for a lady without a nose, was too late convinced of his mistake. It is, perhaps, a mortifying consideration, that we are irresistibly influenced by petty circumstances, which we cannot despise, even while we feel their power; and that our compassion for the suffering of a hero or a lover might be overborn, and their distress rendered ridiculous, even by the names that should be given them; for where is the eloquence, that, in an English elegy, could melt a reader with the sorrows of ching-ping and kang-ho?

As the painter, says Sir Joshua, cannot make his hero talk like a great man, he must make him look like one; and, for that reason, he ought to be well studied in the analysis of those circumstances which constitute dignity of appearance; and even in the expression of passion there should be distinction of character, for the expression of joy and grief is not the same in a hero as in a clown. 

From the last rule, occasion is taken to remark, the Bernini has given a manners to his statue of David, in the act of throwing the stone from the fling, by making him bite under his lip as an expression of energy. This expression might have suited "a sheperd's boy who sought no higher name," but it degraded the character of David: as it is not general, the artist needed not to have adopted it, as it is not noble, he ought not.

The president proceeds to give some directions for colouring; and observes, that in the great [?], all trifling or artful play of little lights, or attention to a variety of tints, is to be avoided: he observes, also, that the painter of history must equally avoid a minute attention to the discriminations of drapery. "It is," says he, "the inferior [?] that marks the variety of stuffs; in the great, the cloathing is neither woolen, nor linen, nor silk, sattin, or velvet; it is drapery; it is nothing more."

The art of disposing the folders of drapery, however, is said to make a considerable part of the painter's study: to make it natural, it is a mere mechanical operation; but it requires the nicest judgement to dispose it, so that the folds make have an easy communication, and gracefully follow each other, which such natural negligence, as to look like the effect of change, and, at the same time, [?] the figure under the greatest advantage.

The three great schools in the epic [?], the Roman, the Florentine, and Bolognese, have formed their practice upon these principles: the best of the French school, Pouffin, Le Seueur, and Le Brun, have followed the Florentine and Bolognese as their model, and may therefore considered as a colony from the Roman school. The Venetian, the Flemish, and the Dutch schools, all profess to depart from the great purposes of painting, and catch at applause by inferior qualities. The object of the Venetian school was mere elegance, more fitted to dazzle than affect. What may heighten the elegant, may degrade the sublime. The Venetians have cultivated those parts of the art which give pleasure to the eye if sense, and totally neglected ex-