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indications of the mind, and illuftrates what the hiftorian fays more exprefsly and particularly. Let a man read a character in my Lord Clarendon (and certainly never was there a better painter in that kind) he will find it improved, by feeing a picture of the fame perfon by Van Dyck. Painting relates the histories of past and present times, the fables of the poets, the allegories of moralifts, and the good things of religion and confequently a picture, befides its being a pleasant ornament, is ufeful to inftruct and improve our minds, and to excite proper sentiments and reflections, as a history, a poem, a book of ethics, or divinity: the truth is, they mutually affift one another.

By reading, or difcourfe, we learn fome particulars which we cannot have otherwife; and by Painting we are taught to form ideas of what we read; we fee thofe things as the painter faw them, or has improved them, with much care and application; and if he be a Rafaelle, a Giulio Romano, or some fuch great genius, we see them better than any one of an inferior character can, or even than one of their equals, without that degree of reflection they had made, poffibly could. After having read Milton, one fees nature with better eyes than before; beauties appear, which elfe had been unregarded fo by converfing with the works of the beft mafters in Painting, one forms better images whilft we are reading or thinking. I fee the divine airs of Rafaelle when I read any hiftory of our Saviour, or the Blessed Virgin; and the awful ones he gives an apoftle when I read of their actions, and conceive of thofe actions, that he and other great men defcribe in a nobler manner than otherwife I fhould ever have done. When I think of the great action of the Decii, or the three hundred Lacedemonians at Thermopylæ, I fee them with fuch faces and attitudes, as Michelangelo or Giulia Romano would have given them; and Venus and the Graces I fee of the hand of Parmeggiano; and fo of other fubjects.

And

And if my ideas are raifed, the fentiments excited in my mind will be proportionably improved. So that fuppofing two men perfely equal in all other refpects, only one is converfant with the works of the best masters (well chofen as to their fubjects) and the other not; the former fhall neceffarily gain the afcendant, and have nobler ideas, more love to his country, more moral virtue, more faith, more piety and devotion than the other; he fhall be a more ingenious, and a better man.

To come to portraits; the picture of an abfent relation, or friend, helps to keep up thofe fentiments which frequently languish by abfence, and may be inftrumental to maintain, and fometimes to augment friendship, and paternal, filial, and conjugal love, and duty.

Upon the fight of a portrait, the character, and mafter-strokes of the hiftory of the perfon it represents, are apt to flow in upon the mind, and to be the fubject of converfation: fo that to fit for one's picture, is to have an abstract of one's life written and published, and ourselves thus configned over to honour or infamy. I know not what influence this has, or may have, but methinks it is rational to believe, that pictures of this kind are fubfervient to virtue; that men are excited to imitate the good actions, and perfuaded to fhun the vices of those whofe examples are thus fet before them; useful hints must certainly be frequently given, and frequently improved into practice. And why fhould we not also believe, that confidering the violent thirst of praise which is natural, especially in the noblest minds, and the better fort of people, they that fee their pictures are fet up as monuments of good or evil fame, are often fecretly admonifhed by the faithful friend in their own breafts, to add new graces to them by praife-worthy actions, and to avoid blemishes, or deface what may have happened, as much as poffible, by a future good conduct. A flattering mercenary hand may represent my face with a youth, or beauty, which belongs not to me, and which I am not one jot the younger, or the handfomer for, though I may

be

be a juft fubje&t of ridicule for defiring, or fuffering fuch flattery: but I myself muft lay on the moft durable colours, my own condu&t gives the boldeft ftrokes of beauty, or deformity.

I will add but one article more in praise of this noble, delightful, and useful art, and that is this: the treasure of a nation confifts in the pure productions of nature, or those managed, or put together, and improved by art: now there is no artificer whatfoever that produces fo valuable a thing from fuch inconfiderable materials of nature's furnishing, as the painter, putting the time (for that alfo muft be confidered as one of thofe materials) into the account: it is next to creation. This nation is many thousands of pounds the richer for Van Dyck's hand, and which is as current money as gold in moft parts of Europe, and this with an inconfiderable expence of the productions of nature; what a treasure then have all the great mafters here, and elfewhere given to the world!

It is nothing to the purpose to fay, by way of objection to all this, that the art has also been fubfervient to impiety, and immorality; I own it has; but am fpeaking of the thing itself, and not the abuse of it: a misfortune to it in common with other excellent things of all kinds, poetry, mufic, learning, religion, &c.

Thus painters, as well as hiftorians, poets, philofophers, divines, &c. confpire in their feveral ways to be ferviceable to mankind; but not with an equal degree of merit, if that merit is to be eftimated according to the talents requifite to excel in any of these profeffions.

But, by the way, it is not every picture-maker that ought to be called a painter, as every rhymer, or Grub-street tale-writer is not a poet, or hiftorian: a painter ought to be a title of dignity, and underftood to imply a perfon endued with fuch excellencies of mind, and body, as have ever been the foundations of honour amongst men. He that paints a hiftory well, must be able to write it; he muft be thoroughly informed of all things relating to it, and conceive it clearly,

clearly, and nobly in his mind, or he can never express it upon the canvafs: he must have a folid judgment, with a lively imagination, and know what figures, and what incidents ought to be brought in, and what every one fhould fay, and think. A painter, therefore, of this clafs muft poffefs all the good qualities requifite to an historian ; unlefs it be language, which however feldom fails of being beautiful, when the thing is clearly, and well conceived. But this is not fufficient to him, he must moreover know the forms of the arms, the habits, cuftoms, buildings, &c. of the age, and country, in which the thing was tranfacted, more exactly than the other needs to know them. And as his bufinefs is not to write the Hiftory of a few years, or of one age, or country, but of all ages, and all nations, as occafion offers, he must have a proportionable fund of ancient, and modern learning of all kinds.

As to paint a history, a man ought to have the main qualities of a good hiftorian, and fomething more; he must yet go higher, and have the talents requifite to a good poet; the rules for the conduct of a picture being much the fame with thofe to be obferved in writing a poem; and Painting, as well as poetry, requiring an elevation of genius beyond what pure hiftorical narration does; the painter must imagine his figures to think, fpeak, and act, as a poet fhould do in a tragedy, or epic poem; especially if his subject be a fable, or an allegory. If a poet has, moreover, the care of the diction and verfification, the painter has a task perhaps at least equivalent to that, after he has well conceived the thing over and above what is merely mechanical, and other particulars, which shall be spoken to presently, and that is, the knowledge of the nature and effects of colours, lights, fhadows, reflections, &c. And as his bufinefs is not to compofe one Iliad, or one Eneid only, but perhaps many, he must be furnished with a vast stock of poetical, as well as hifforical learning.

Befides