knowledge of perfect beauty, than setting up the ancients for that purpose: consequently Bernini, by adhering too ftrictly to Nature, acted against his own principles, as well as obftructed the progrefs of his disciples.

The imitation of beauty is either reduced to a fingle object, and is individual, or, gathering obfervations from fingle ones, compofes of thefe one whole. The former we call copying, drawing a portrait; 'tis the straight way to Dutch forms and figures; whereas the other leads to general beauty, and its ideal images, and is the way the Greeks took. But there is still this difference between them and us they enjoying daily occafions of feeing beauty, (suppose even not fuperior to ours,) acquired those ideal riches with lefs toil than we, confined as we are to a few and often fruitless opportunities, ever can hope for. It would be no eafy matter, I fancy, for our nature, to produce a frame equal in beauty to that of Antinous; and

furely

furely no idea can foar above the more than human proportions of a deity, in the Apollo of the Vatican, which is a compound of the united force of Nature, Genius, and Art.

Their imitation discovering in the one every beauty diffused through Nature, fhewing in the other the pitch to which the moft perfect Nature can elevate herself, when foaring above the fenfes, will quicken the genius of the artist, and shorten his discipleship: he will learn to think and draw with confidence, seeing here the fixed limits of human and divine beauty.

་་

Building on this ground, his hand and fenfes directed by the Greek rule of beauty, the modern artift goes on the furest way to the imitation of Nature. The ideas of unity and perfection, which he acquired in meditating on antiquity, will help him to combine, and to ennoble the more scattered and weaker beauties of our Nature. Thus he will improve every beauty he discovers in C 2

it,

it, and by comparing the beauties of nature with the ideal, form rules for himself.

Then, and not fooner, he, particularly the painter, may be allowed to commit himfelf to Nature, especially in cafes where his art is beyond the inftruction of the old marbles, to wit, in drapery; then, like Pouffin, he may proceed with more liberty; for " a "timid follower will never get the start of his leaders, and he who is at a loss to ❝ produce fomething of his own, will be a bad manager of the productions of another," as Michael Angelo fays, Minds favoured by Nature,

Quibus Arte benigna,

Et meliore luto, finxit præcordia Titan,

have here a plain way to become originals.

Thus the account de Piles gives, ought to be understood, that Raphael, a short time before he was carried off by death, intended to forfake the marbles, in order to addict himfelf wholly to Nature. True antient tafte

taste would most certainly have guided him through every maze of common Nature; and whatever obfervations, whatever new ideas he might have reaped from that, they would all, by a kind of chymical transmutation, have been changed to his own effence and foul.

He, perhaps, might have indulged more variety; enlarged his draperies; improved his colours, his light and fhadow: but none of these improvements would have raised his pictures to that high efteem they deserve, for that noble Contour, and that fublimity of thoughts, which he acquired from the

ancients.

Nothing would more decifively prove the advantages to be got by imitating the ancients, preferably to Nature, than an effay made with two youths of equal talents, by devoting the one to antiquity, the other to Nature: this would draw Nature as he finds her; if Italian, perhaps he might paint like Caravaggio; if Flemish, and lucky,

like Jac. Jordans; if French, like Stella: the other would draw her as the directs, and paint like Raphael.

BUT

II. CONTOUR.

UT even fuppofing that the imitation of Nature could fupply all the artist wants, she never could bestow the precision of Contour, that characteristic distinction of the ancients.

The nobleft Contour unites or circumscribes every part of the most perfect Nature, and the ideal beauties in the figures of the Greeks; or rather, contains them both. Euphranor, famous after the epoch of Zeuxis, is faid to have firft ennobled it.

Many of the moderns have attempted to imitate this Contour, but very few with fuccess. The great Rubens is far from having attained either its precifion or elegance, efpecially in the performances which he finished

before