B. You have, I think, fully established the principle you contend for; namely, that we have all within us the feeds of taste, and are capable, if we exercife our powers, of improving them into a fufficient knowledge of the polite arts. I am perfuaded, that nothing is a greater hinderance to our advances in any art, than the high opinion we form of the judgment of its profeffors, and the proportionable diffidence of our own. I have rarely met with an artist, who was not an implicit admirer of fome particular school, or a flave to fome favourite manner. They feldom, like gentlemen and fcholars, rife to an unprejudiced and liberal contemplation of true beauty. The dif ficulties they find in the practice of their art, tie them down to the mechanick: at the fame time, that felf-love and vanity lead them into an admiration of

5

those

thofe ftrokes of the pencil, which come the nearest to their own. I knew a painter at Rome, a man of fenfe too, who talked much more of Jacinto Brandi, than he did either of Correggio or Raphael.

DIALOGUE III.

Of the Antiquity and Ufefulness of

TH

PAINTING.

HOUGH the antiquity of an art is not that which fhould determine its value, yet, it creates a refpect, and increases, if 1 may be allowed the expreffion, its confequence with us, when we know it to have been the ftudy and purfuit of the earliest ages. The connection that prevails between the polite arts, extends not only to a fimilitude in their operations and effects, it marks likewise a kind of fifter-hood their origin: For, as the different branches of the fame art are ever observed to flourish together; fo, the power of drawing men to our ends by flattering their imaginations, or interefting their paffions be

in

ing exerted in any one mode, we may reafonably promife ourselves the invention of the reft. Hence we must always expect to see painting, eloquence, and fculpture advancing like the Graces, hand in hand, to perfection: They fhould, like the glories of the rainbow, fhine forth at once in a friendly fplendor; and, to continue the image, they should too, like those, fade and go out in an immediate fucceffion: Accordingly this has been in all times the cafe. "[m] For who, fays an ancient writer, can fufficiently wonder, "that the most eminent geniuses in every

profeffion, fhould appear in the fame degrees of excellence, and at the fame "critical point of time?" It had been fo in the ages of Alexander the Great, and

[n] Quis enim abunde mirari poteft, quod eminentiffima cujufque profeffionis ingenia, in eandem formam, et in idem ar&tati temporis congruant fpatium? Vell. Pat. Hift. lib. i. c. 16.

C 3

Auguftus;

Auguftus; and was fo afterwards, in those of Leo X, and Lewis XIV. If, therefore, that which has been invariable in the hiftorical ages, may, by a juft analogy, be extended to those which preceded them, I fhould have no more difficulty in pronouncing, that there were painters before the time of Homer, than Tully had in affirming, that there were poets. Though the reason of things may be fufficient to establish this opinion; yet, we have still surer grounds to rest on: Sculpture and painting muft, from their nature, be infeparable, as defign is the parent of both. That the first of these exifted before Homer, we can have no doubt, when we read his description of the fhield of Achilles; the compofition of which would do honour to a Fiammingo, or Algardi. He fays, in one place, that the earth grew dark under the plow. This fhows, that they then knew