Chapter X: Part 10

[53] Morley, bishop of Winchester, who, as presently will be noticed, was chaplain in the family of Sir Edward Hyde during the usurpation, tells us, “that the duchess, (then Miss Hyde,) as she was the eldest, so was she the forwardest, and most capable to receive instruction; for God having given her an extraordinary good understanding for one of her sex and years, so he had given her an extraordinary good inclination to the exercises of piety and devotion; so that, when she was not, as I remember, above twelve years of age, I did think her every way fit to be admitted to the receiving the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, which she did then, and always afterwards, with very great devotion, so long as she and I staid together in her father’s house at Antwerp.”—_Preface to Bishop Morley’s Treatise_, p. vi.

[54] Morley says, that he continued to be the duchess’s spiritual director “until after her father’s banishment; and all that time I must bear her witness, that she was not only a zealous Protestant herself, according as it is by law established in the church of England, but zealous to make proselytes.”—_Preface as above_, p. xii.

[55] Dr Peter Heylin was born at Burford, in Oxfordshire, in 1600, and rose high in the church, being one of the chaplains in ordinary to Charles I. During the great civil war, he was reduced to distress, but survived the Restoration, and died in 1662. In 1661, he published his history of the Reformation, under the title of “_Ecclesia Restaurata_.”

[56] These were Sheldon and Morley. Sheldon was bishop of London, and was promoted to the see of Canterbury on the death of the venerable Juxon. Burnet describes him as generous and charitable, and extremely dexterous in politics; but adds, that he only spoke of religion as an engine of government, and _thus_ gained with the king the character of a wise and honest clergyman. He was much blamed by the Low Church divines, for the rigour with which he followed up the parliamentary deprivation, by which two thousand divines, as was alleged, were ejected for non-conformity.

Blandford, successively bishop of Oxford and Worcester, was an able and excellent divine, modest and humble, says Burnet, even to a fault. Morley, bishop of Winchester, had recommended him to the duchess to be her spiritual director in his stead, when he himself retired from court in 1667: “And I made choice of him,” says that prelate, “not only because, in regard of his learning, piety, gravity, and modesty, together with the gentleness and sweetness of his address and conversation, he was at least as fit as any I could think of for that employment, but in regard of his former relation of chaplain to her father, to whom he owed his rise in the church.”—_Preface to Bishop Morley’s Treatise_, p. xiv.

[57] Stillingfleet, being at this time dean of St Paul’s, stood in the van of the controversy with the Papists. He had learning, penetration, some power of language, without much nicety of expression, and, above all, that intrepidity and undaunted resolution which the times required. After the Revolution, he reaped the harvest of his labours in the bishopric of Worcester. This eminent divine was born in 1635, and died in 1699. The tract which follows, is the third part of his Answer to the Papers published by James, respecting the conversion of his brother and wife to the Roman Catholic faith.

[58] This prelate was Dr George Morley, who, during the time of the usurpation, was domestic chaplain to Sir Edward Hyde, afterwards Lord Clarendon; and educated his daughter, Anne Hyde, in the faith of the church of England. See page 189. Upon the Restoration, Morley was made successively bishop of Worcester and Winchester. “He was,” says Burnet, “a pious, charitable man, of an exemplary life, but extremely passionate and obstinate.” This prelate, who was deeply and justly afflicted with the Duchess’s change of religion, vindicated himself from the suspicion of having neglected his duty towards her, by publishing, in 1683, a collection of tracts, with an apologetical preface already quoted, and a letter which he had written to the Duchess in 1670-1, some months before her death, upon hearing a rumour that she was shaken in her adherence to the Protestant faith.

[59] Preface to his Treatise, p. 5.

[60] Letter to her Royal Highness, p. 3, 4.

[61] “And this I am the rather obliged to believe, because, the last time I had any discourse with your Highness of things of this nature, you did seriously affirm to me, that never any priest of the church of Rome had ever been so bold as to enter into any discourse of religion with you. Whereupon, when I humbly besought your Highness, that if any of them should be so bold at any time afterwards, and you should think fit to hear what they could say, either for their own church, or against ours; your Highness would be pleased to command them to give it you in writing, and that you would be pleased to show me, or my lord of Oxford, any such papers, or paper, they should give you to consider of, and to reply to: the which, because you were pleased to promise me you would do, and have never as yet done, (not to me I am sure, nor to him either for aught I know,) I cannot believe that any thing of that kind hath been as yet said to you, at least, not so as to make any impression on you, and much less to gain an absolute belief from you, that there is no salvation to be had but in the church of Rome only, and consequently, that if ever you mean to be saved, you must of necessity quit our communion, and embrace theirs.”—_Letter to the Duchess_.

[62] Sheldon, and Blandford. The former, as already mentioned, was bishop of London, and afterwards archbishop of Canterbury; the latter bishop of Oxford, afterwards of Worcester.

[63] Blandford.

[64] The bishop of Winchester had only heard of this paper from Maimbourg’s publication, “wherein,” says Morley, “he reciteth something, which he saith was written by the late Duchess of York, to justify her leaving the communion of the church of England, to embrace that of Rome. But why should I say any more, or indeed so much as I have said of a _non-ens_, or of what I believe never was in _rerum naturâ_; I mean such a discourse, as is pretended to have been betwixt the Dutchess of York, and two of the most learned bishops of England; I know no proof we have, that there was ever any such thing, at least in print, or publicly known, and avowed, but this attestation of Maimbourg the Jesuit, who I am sure was neither eye nor ear witness of it, but must have it by hearsay only, from others, who had it from others, that might be the devisers of it.”

[65] Heylin’s extreme animosity against the Puritans, hurries him into the opposite extreme of favouring the Catholics. Nicolson has observed, that he falls foul of all the princes of the time, without regard to their good or ill wishes to the Protestant interest. _Historical Library_, p. 98.—Burnet even charges him with delivering “many things in such a manner, and so strangely, that one would think he had been secretly set on to it by those of the church of Rome;” but adds, “I doubt not he was a sincere Protestant, but violently carried away by some particular conceits.”—_Burnet’s History of the Reformation_, Preface.

[66] The treatise alluded to, seems to be “An Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England, in the several Articles proposed by the late Bishop of Condom,” 4to, 1689. This was circulated by the Protestant divines, in reply to “An Exposition of the Doctrine of the Catholic Church in Matters of Controversy. By the Reverend James Benigne Bossuet, Counsellor to the King, Bishop of Meaux, formerly of Condom. Done into English,” &c. 4to, 1685.

[67] This alludes to a story of an Oxford divine, who imagined he had utterly confounded the grand advocate of the Catholic church, by the stout, though unsupported asseveration, “Bellarmine, thou liest!” This egregious argument is alluded to in the Preface to “The Royal Medal Vindicated;” and in another tract, entitled, “Letter to a Friend concerning Dr Owen’s Principles,” 1670.

[68] Sir Henry Wotton, provost of Eton College, who died in 1639, directed his grave-stone to be thus inscribed:

_Hic jacet hujus Sententiæ primus Author;
Disputandi Pruritus, Ecclesiæ Scabies,
Nomen Alias Quære._

Wotton’s biographer, honest Isaac Walton, seems to allow, that this sentence, or something like it, was to be elsewhere found, and that Sir Henry was not the first author of it. But he contends, that reason, mixed with charity, must persuade all readers to believe that a holy lethargy had surprised his memory when he assumed the merit of inventing it.

[69] Dr Seth Ward, an eminent mathematician.

[70] Sheldon and Blandford. _Vide Supra_, p. 198.

[71] Dr Blandford, at the time of the conference with the duchess of York, was bishop of Oxford. Being afterwards translated to the diocese of Worcester, he is elsewhere always in this tract called by the latter title. He died bishop of Worcester in 1675.—MALONE.

[72] In allusion to the game of chess, where one of the two pieces, called bishops, always moves on the white, and the other on the black spaces of the chequer.

[73] From the French _rompre en visiere_; a phrase taken from tilting, and used metaphorically for giving an open affront.

[74] During the parliamentary struggles of 1680, the Commons used many arbitrary measures to support their authority, and especially by summarily committing those who, having expressed by petition to the king their abhorrence of addresses for calling a parliament, were called _abhorrers_. “Scarce a day passed, but some _abhorrer_ was dragged before them, and committed to the custody of the serjeant at arms, at the pleasure of the House; and this strange despotism they exercised with so much wantonness, as well as cruelty, that Mr Treby was pleased to say, _they kept an hawk_, (meaning the said serjeant,) _and they must every day find flesh for him_. And the quantity he was this sessions gorged with, gave rise to this proverbial expression—_Take him, Topham!_ [the name of the serjeant,] in all discourse of peremptory commitment.”—_North’s Examen_, p. 561. These arbitrary commitments are elsewhere censured by Dryden, particularly in the Postscript to the History of the League.—See p. 179.

[75] _Nolo episcopare._

[76] Morley is anxious to vindicate himself from being one of the two bishops consulted, for, in Maimbourg’s copy of the Duchesses paper, they were not named. “Supposing,” said he, “there was such a conference betwixt her Highness and two bishops of the church of England, and that what they said to her did increase her desire to embrace the Roman Catholic religion; yet what doth that concern you, (may some man say,) as to your own particular? Are you one of the two of the most learned bishops of the church of England? (for so it is said they were, to whom the Duchess proposed her scruples,) No; I am not, I know I am not, I am sure I am not; but yet (how unlearned, and how unworthy soever,) I am a bishop, and a bishop of the church of England; and therefore as he, to whom it was said, _Tantumne otii tibi à re tuâ est, aliena ut cures?_ answered, _Homo sum, Humani nihil à me alienum puto_; so say I, _Episcopus sum, et Episcopus Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ_, and therefore think myself concerned in whatsoever was said in reproach of episcopacy; especially in reproach of any of the bishops of our own church.”

[77] Probably her brothers, Clarendon and Rochester.

[78] Such was James’s account of the dying hours of his first wife. Burnet gives a different statement, which may be here transcribed:—

“While things were in fermentation, the Duchess of York died. It was observed, that for fifteen months before that time, she had not received the sacrament; and that upon all occasions, she was excusing the errors that the church of Rome was charged with, and was giving them the best colours they were capable of. An unmarried clergy was also a common topic with her. Morley had been her father confessor; for he told me, she practised secret confession to him from the time that she was twelve years old; and, when he was sent away from the court, he put her in the hands of Blandford, who died bishop of Worcester. Morley also told me, that upon the reports that were brought him of her slackness in receiving the sacrament, she having been for many years punctual to once a month, he had spoken plainly to her about it, and told her what inferences were made upon it. She pretended ill health, and business; but protested to him, she had no scruples with relation to her religion, and was still of the church of England; and assured him, that no Popish priest had ever taken the confidence to speak to her of those matters. He took a solemn engagement of her, that if scruples should arise in her mind, she would let him know them, and hear what he should offer to her upon all of them. And he protested to me, that to her death she never owned to him that she had any scruples, though she was for some days entertained by him at Farnham, after the date of the paper, which was afterwards published in her name. All this passed between the bishop and me, upon the duke’s shewing me that paper, all writ in her own hand, which was afterwards published by Maimbourg. He would not let me take a copy of it; but he gave me leave to read it twice. And I went immediately to Morley, and gave him an account of it; from whom I had all the particulars already mentioned. And upon that he concluded, that that unhappy princess had been prevailed on to give falsehoods under her hand, and to pretend that these were the grounds of her conversion. A long decay of health came at last to a quicker crisis than had been apprehended. All of the sudden she fell into the agony of death. Blandford was sent for, to prepare her for it, and to offer her the sacrament. Before he could come, the queen came in, and sat by her. He was modest and humble, even to a fault. So he had not presence of mind enough to begin prayers, which probably would have driven the queen out of the room. But, that not being done, she pretending kindness, would not leave her. The bishop spoke but little, and fearfully. He happened to say, he hoped she continued still in the truth: Upon which she asked, what is truth; and then, her agony encreasing, she repeated the word truth, truth, often; and in a few minutes after she died, very little beloved, or lamented. Her haughtiness had raised her many enemies. She was indeed a firm and a kind friend: But the change of her religion made her friends reckon her death rather a blessing than a loss at that time to them all. Her father, when he heard of her shaking in her religion, was more troubled at it, than at all his own misfortunes. He writ her a very grave and long letter upon it, enclosed in one to the duke. But she was dead before it came into England.”—_Burnet’s History of his own Times_, Book II.

[79] History of Henry VIII. p. 402, according to Dryden. I cannot find the passage alluded to.

[80] Clement the Tenth.

[81] The church of England Divines made a common cause at this important crisis. Those who directed the warfare, were Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Tennison, and Patrick; and under their banners, Burnet numbers Sherlock, Williams, Claget, Gee, Aldrich, Atterbury, Whitby, Hooper, and Wake. It is probable, that when a piece of such consequence as the Answer to the Royal Papers was to be brought forward, more than one of these would be employed in revising, at least, and correcting it.

[82] The Duke of York, who commanded the fleet in the Dutch wars.

[83] Robert Wisdom was a fugitive in the reign of Queen Mary; in that of Elizabeth, he became rector of Stysted in Essex, and of Settrington in Yorkshire, and died in 1568. He was a zealous puritan, and the author of a hymn, printed at the end of Sternhold’s psalms, which begins with the passage referred to in the text:

Preserve us, Lord, by thy dear word;
From Turk and Pope defend us, Lord.

The witty Bishop Corbet thus addresses the ghost of Robert Wisdom:

Thou, once a body, now but aire,
Arch-botcher of a psalme or prayer,
From Carfax come;
And patch me up a zealous lay,
With an old _ever and for aye_,
Or _all and some_.
Or such a spirit lend mee,
As may a hymne down send mee,
To purge my braine.
So, Robert, look behind thee,
Least _Turk or Pope_ do find thee,
And goe to bed againe.

[84] This assertion Stillingfleet denied. See the conclusion of his Answer to the Defence, where he affirms “such a book had been lately published in London.” To this Dryden replied, that “the magnified piece of Duncombe on this subject, which his opponent must have meant, was stolen, or translated, without acknowledgment, from the Spanish of Rodriguez;” meaning, probably, the Jesuit Alonso Rodriguez, who wrote “_Exercio de perfecion y Virtudes Christianas, Sevilla, 1609_.” But while Dryden claimed for the Catholic church the merit of this work, he seems to have mistaken the name of the translator; for in the preface to the “Town and Country Mouse,” Prior, or Montague, upbraid him with having confounded _Allen_ with _Duncombe_; names which did not so much as rhyme. In a list of books subjoined to “The Practice of a Holy Life, by Thomas Allen, rector of Kettering, in Northamptonshire,” I find “The Virtue of Humility, recommended to be printed by the late Reverend and Learned Dr Henry Hammond,” which may be the book alluded to by Stillingfleet. See Vol. X. pages 114. 249.

[85] Hitherto Stillingfleet had been encountering the person who defended the two papers which were found in the king’s strong box, with which part of the controversy Dryden had nothing to do.

[86] Defence, p. 250.

[87] Defence, p. 219.

[88] Defence, p. 217.

[89] Ibid. p. 210.

[90] Defence, p. 211.

[91] Defence, p. 220.

[92] Ibid. p. 232.

[93] Defence, p. 232.

[94] Defence, p. 212.

[95] Defence, p. 213.

[96] Ibid, p. 217, 218.

[97] Defence, p. 222.

[98] Defence, p. 242.

[99] Nicholas Sanders, some time regius professor of the canon law at Oxford. Upon the Reformation, he fled to Rome, where he was long a retainer of Cardinal Hosius. At last Gregory XIII. sent him as Nuncio into Ireland, where he died in 1580. His work here alluded to, is a history of the Reformation, under the opprobrious title _De Origine et Progressu Schismatis Anglicani_. Stillingfleet refers to the passage, l. i. p. 11.

[100] Page 15.

[101] Page 10.

[102] Page 18.

[103] Acworth. c. Sander. l. 2. c. 14, 17.

[104] Page 22.

[105] History of Hen. VIII. p. 216.

[106] _Servi Fidelis Responsio, &c._

[107] Lord Herbert, p. 219.

[108] Apology for the Oath of Allegiance.

[109] Defence, p. 243.

[110] Ibid.

[111] Conference, § 24. p. 156.

THE
ART OF PAINTING;

BY
C. A. DU FRESNOY.

WITH REMARKS.

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH;
WITH AN ORIGINAL PREFACE, CONTAINING
A PARALLEL BETWEEN PAINTING AND POETRY.
FIRST PRINTED IN QUARTO IN 1695.

ART OF PAINTING, &c.

Charles Alphonse Du Fresnoy, as we learn from his life by Mason, was born in Paris in the year 1611. He studied the art of painting in Rome and Venice, and afterwards practised it in France with great reputation. Meanwhile, he did not neglect the sister pursuit of poetry; and combining it with the studies of an artist, he composed his poem on the Art of Painting. It did not appear till after the author’s death, in 1658, when it was published with the French version, and remarks of De Piles. The first edition was printed in 1661. This poem, as containing, in elegant and perspicuous language, the most just rules for artists and amateurs, has been always held in esteem by the admirers of the art which it professes to teach.

The version of Dryden first appeared in 4to, in 1695, and was republished by Richard Graham in 1716, by whom it is inscribed to Lord Burlington. The editor of 1716, informs us, that Mr Jervas had undertaken to correct such passages of the translation as Dryden had erred in by following, too closely, the French version of De Piles. To Graham’s edition is prefixed the epistle from Pope to Jervas, with Dryden’s version; an honourable and beautiful testimony from the living to the dead poet, which I have retained with pleasure, as also the epistle from Mason to Sir Joshua Reynolds, which contains some remarks on Dryden’s version.

The late Mr Mason, as a juvenile exercise, executed a poetical version of Fresnoy’s poem, which has had the honour to be admitted into the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, vol. iii. and might have superseded the necessity of here reprinting the prose of Dryden. But there is something so singular in a great poet undertaking to render into prose the admired poem of a foreign bard, that, as a specimen of such an uncommon task, as well as on account of its brevity, I have retained this translation.

Being no judge of the art to which the poem refers, I follow the readings of Jervas, as published by Graham in 1716.

Mason has retained the Parallel between Painting and Poetry, in his edition of Fresnoy, with the following note:

“It was thought proper to insert in this place the pleasing preface, which Mr Dryden printed before his translation of M. Du Fresnoy’s poem. There is a charm in that great writer’s prose, peculiar to itself; and though, perhaps, the parallel between the two arts, which he has here drawn, be too superficial to stand the test of strict criticism, yet it will always give pleasure to readers of taste, even when it fails to satisfy their judgment.”

TO MR JERVAS, WITH FRESNOY’S ART OF PAINTING, TRANSLATED BY MR DRYDEN.

This verse be thine, my friend; nor thou refuse
This from no venal or ungrateful muse.
Whether thy hand strike out some free design,
Where life awakes, and dawns at every line;
Or blend in beauteous tints the coloured mass,
And from the canvas call the mimic face;
Read these instructive leaves, in which conspire
Fresnoy’s close art, and Dryden’s native fire;
And reading wish, like theirs, our fate and fame,
So mixed our studies, and so joined our name;
Like them to shine through long succeeding age,
So just thy skill, so regular my rage.
Smit with the love of sister-arts we came,
And met congenial, mingling flame with flame;
Like friendly colours found our arts unite,
And each from each contract new strength and light.
How oft in pleasing tasks we wear the day,
While summer suns roll unperceived away?
How oft our slowly growing works impart,
While images reflect from art to art?
How oft review; each finding like a friend
Something to blame, and something to commend?
What flattering scenes our wandering fancy wrought,
Rome’s pompous glories rising to our thought!
Together o’er the Alps methinks we fly,
Fired with ideas of fair Italy.
With thee, on Raphael’s monument I mourn,
Or wait inspiring dreams at Maro’s urn;
With thee repose where Tully once was laid,
Or seek some ruin’s formidable shade;
While fancy brings the vanished piles to view,
And builds imaginary Rome anew.
Here thy well studied marbles fix our eye;
A fading Fresco here demands a sigh;
Each heavenly piece unwearied we compare,
Match Raphael’s grace, with thy loved Guido’s air,
Caracci’s strength, Correggio’s softer line,
Paulo’s free stroke, and Titian’s warmth divine.
How finished with illustrious toil appears,
This small well polished gem, the work of years![112]
Yet still how faint by precept is exprest,
The living image in the painter’s breast?
Thence endless streams of fair ideas flow,
Strike in the sketch, or in the picture glow;
Thence beauty, waking all her forms, supplies
An angel’s sweetness, or Bridgewater’s eyes.
Muse! at that name thy sacred sorrows shed,
Those tears eternal that embalm the dead;
Call round her tomb each object of desire,
Each purer frame informed with purer fire;
Bid her be all that chears or softens life,
The tender sister, daughter, friend, and wife!
Bid her be all that makes mankind adore;
Then view this marble, and be vain no more!
Yet still her charms in breathing paint engage;
Her modest cheek shall warm a future age.
Beauty, frail flower, that every season fears,
Blooms in thy colours for a thousand years.
Thus Churchil’s race shall other hearts surprise,
And other beauties envy Wortley’s eyes;
Each pleasing Blount shall endless smiles bestow,
And soft Belinda’s blush for ever glow.
Oh! lasting as those colours may they shine,
Free as thy stroke, yet faultless as thy line!
New graces yearly, like thy works, display;
Soft without weakness, without glaring gay;
Led by some rule, that guides, but not constrains;
And finished more through happiness than pains!
The kindred arts shall in their praise conspire,
One dip the pencil, and one string the lyre.
Yet should the Graces all thy figures place,
And breath an air divine on every face;
Yet should the Muses bid my numbers roll,
Strong as their charms, and gentle as their soul;
With Zeuxis’ Helen thy Bridgewater vie,
And these be sung till Granville’s Myra die;
Alas! how little from the grave we claim?
Thou but preservest a Form, and I a Name.

A. POPE.

TO SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

When Dryden, worn with sickness, bowed with years,
Was doomed (my friend, let pity warm thy tears,)
The galling pang of penury to feel,
For ill-placed loyalty, and courtly zeal;
To see that laurel which his brows o’erspread,
Transplanted droop on Shadwell’s barren head,
The bard oppressed, yet not subdued by fate,
For very bread descended to translate;
And he, whose fancy, copious as his phrase,
Could light at will expression’s brightest blaze,
On Fresnoy’s lay employed his studious hour;
But niggard there of that melodious power,
His pen in haste the hireling task to close,
Transformed the studied strain to careless prose,
Which, fondly lending faith to French pretence,
Mistook its meaning, or obscured its sense.
Yet still he pleased, for Dryden still must please,
Whether with artless elegance and ease
He glides in prose, or from its tinkling chime, }
By varied pauses, purifies his rhyme, }
And mounts on Maro’s plumes, and soars his heights sublime. }
This artless elegance, this native fire,
Provoked his tuneful heir to strike the lyre,
Who, proud his numbers with that prose to join,
Wove an illustrious wreath for friendship’s shrine.
How oft, on that fair shrine when poets bind
The flowers of song, does partial passion blind
Their judgment’s eye! How oft does truth disclaim
The deed, and scorn to call it genuine fame!
How did she here, when Jervas was the theme,
Waft through the ivory gate the poet’s dream!
How view, indignant, error’s base alloy
The sterling lustre of his praise destroy,
Which now, if praise like his my muse could coin,
Current through ages, she would stamp for thine!
Let friendship, as she caused, excuse the deed;
With thee, and such as thee, she must succeed.
But what if fashion tempted Pope astray?
The witch has spells, and Jervas knew a day,
When mode-struck belles and beaux were proud to come,
And buy of him a thousand years of bloom.
Even then I deem it but a venal crime;
Perish alone that selfish sordid rhyme,
Which flatters lawless sway, or tinsel pride;
Let black oblivion plunge it in her tide.
From fate like this my truth-supported lays,
Even if aspiring to thy pencil’s praise,
Would flow secure; but humbler aims are mine;
Know, when to thee I consecrate the line,
’Tis but to thank thy genius for the ray,
Which pours on Fresnoy’s rules a fuller day;
Those candid strictures, those reflections new,
Refined by taste, yet still as nature true,
Which, blended here with his instructive strains,
Shall bid thy art inherit new domains;
Give her in Albion as in Greece to rule,
And guide (what thou hast formed) a British school.
And O, if aught thy poet can pretend
Beyond his favourite wish to call thee friend,
Be it that here his tuneful toil has drest
The muse of Fresnoy in a modern vest;
And, with what skill his fancy could bestow,
Taught the close folds to take an easier flow;
Be it, that here thy partial smile approved,
The pains he lavished on the art he loved.

A. MASON.

A PARALLEL OF POETRY AND PAINTING.

It may be reasonably expected that I should say something on my own behalf, in respect to my present undertaking. First, then, the reader may be pleased to know, that it was not of my own choice that I undertook this work. Many of our most skilful painters, and other artists, were pleased to recommend this author to me, as one who perfectly understood the rules of painting; who gave the best and most concise instructions for performance, and the surest to inform the judgment of all who loved this noble art: that they who before, were rather fond of it, than knowingly admired it, might defend their inclination by their reason; that they might understand those excellencies which they blindly valued, so as not to be farther imposed on by bad pieces, and to know when nature was well imitated by the most able masters. It is true indeed, and they acknowledge it, that beside the rules which are given in this treatise, or which can be given in any other, to make a perfect judgment of good pictures, and to value them more or less, when compared with one another, there is farther required a long conversation with the best pieces, which are not very frequent either in France or England; yet some we have, not only from the hands of Holbein, Rubens, and Vandyck, (one of them admirable for history-painting, and the other two for portraits,) but of many Flemish masters, and those not inconsiderable, though for design not equal to the Italians. And of these latter also, we are not unfurnished with some pieces of Raphaell, Titian, Correggio, Michael Angelo, and others.

But to return to my own undertaking of this translation. I freely own that I thought myself incapable of performing it, either to their satisfaction, or my own credit. Not but that I understood the original Latin, and the French author, perhaps as well as most Englishmen; but I was not sufficiently versed in the terms of art; and therefore thought that many of those persons who put this honourable task on me, were more able to perform it themselves,—as undoubtedly they were. But they, assuring me of their assistance in correcting my faults where I spoke improperly, I was encouraged to attempt it, that I might not be wanting in what I could, to satisfy the desires of so many gentlemen, who were willing to give the world this useful work. They have effectually performed their promise to me, and I have been as careful, on my side, to take their advice in all things; so that the reader may assure himself of a tolerable translation,—not elegant, for I proposed not that to myself, but familiar, clear, and instructive: in any of which parts if I have failed, the fault lies wholly at my door. In this one particular only, I must beg the reader’s pardon. The prose translation of this poem is not free from poetical expressions, and I dare not promise that some of them are not fustian, or at least highly metaphorical; but this being a fault in the first digestion, (that is, the original Latin,) was not to be remedied in the second, viz. the translation. And I may confidently say, that whoever had attempted it must have fallen into the same inconvenience, or a much greater, that of a false version.

When I undertook this work, I was already engaged in the translation of Virgil,[113] from whom I have borrowed only two months; and am now returning to that which I ought to understand better. In the mean time I beg the reader’s pardon, for entertaining him so long with myself: it is an usual part of ill manners in all authors, and almost in all mankind, to trouble others with their business; and I was so sensible of it beforehand, that I had not now committed it, unless some concernments of the reader’s had been interwoven with my own. But I know not, while I am atoning for one error, if I am not falling into another; for I have been importuned to say something farther of this art; and to make some observations on it, in relation to the likeness and agreement which it has with poetry, its sister. But before I proceed, it will not be amiss, if I copy from Bellori, (a most ingenious author yet living,) some part of his idea of a painter,[114] which cannot be unpleasing, at least to such who are conversant in the philosophy of Plato; and, to avoid tediousness, I will not translate the whole discourse, but take and leave as I find occasion.

“God Almighty, in the fabric of the universe, first contemplated himself, and reflected on his own excellencies; from which he drew and constituted those first forms which are called ideas; so that every species which was afterwards expressed, was produced from that first idea, forming that wonderful contexture of all created beings. But the celestial bodies above the moon being incorruptible, and not subject to change, remained for ever fair, and in perpetual order. On the contrary, all things which are sublunary are subject to change, to deformity, and to decay. And though nature always intends a consummate beauty in her productions, yet through the inequality of the matter, the forms are altered; and in particular, human beauty suffers alteration for the worse, as we see to our mortification, in the deformities and disproportions which are in us. For which reason, the artful painter and the sculptor, imitating the Divine Maker, form to themselves, as well as they are able, a model of the superior beauties; and reflecting on them, endeavour to correct and amend the common nature, and to represent it as it was at first created, without fault, either in colour, or in lineament.

“This idea, which we may call the goddess of painting and of sculpture, descends upon the marble and the cloth, and becomes the original of those arts; and being measured by the compass of the intellect, is itself the measure of the performing hand; and being animated by the imagination, infuses life into the image. The idea of the painter and the sculptor is undoubtedly that perfect and excellent example of the mind, by imitation of which imagined form all things are represented which fall under human sight: such is the definition which is made by Cicero in his book of the “Orator” to Brutus:—‘As therefore in forms and figures there is somewhat which is excellent and perfect, to which imagined species all things are referred by imitation, which are the objects of sight, in like manner we behold the species of eloquence in our minds, the _effigies_ or actual image of which we seek in the organs of our hearing.’ This is likewise confirmed by Proclus in the dialogue of Plato, called “Timæus.” ‘If, says he, you take a man as he is made by nature, and compare him with another, who is the effect of art, the work of nature will always appear the less beautiful, because art is more accurate than nature.’ But Zeuxis, who, from the choice which he made of five virgins, drew that wonderful picture of Helena, which Cicero, in his “Orator” before-mentioned, sets before us as the most perfect example of beauty, at the same time admonishes a painter, to contemplate the ideas of the most natural forms, and to make a judicious choice of several bodies, all of them the most elegant which he can find; by which we may plainly understand, that he thought it impossible to find in any one body all those perfections which he sought for the accomplishment of a Helena, because nature in any individual person makes nothing that is perfect in all its parts. For this reason Maximus Tyrius also says, that the image which is taken by a painter from several bodies, produces a beauty which it is impossible to find in any single natural body, approaching to the perfection of the fairest statues. Thus nature on this account is so much inferior to art, that those artists who propose to themselves only the imitation and likeness of such or such a particular person, without election of those ideas before-mentioned, have often been reproached for that omission. Demetrius was taxed for being too natural; Dionysius was also blamed for drawing men like us, and was commonly called ανθρωπόγραφος, that is, a painter of men. In our times, Michael Angelo da Caravaggio was esteemed too natural. He drew persons as they were; and Bamboccio, and most of the Dutch painters, have drawn the worst likeness. Lysippus of old upbraided the common sort of sculptors, for making men such as they were found in nature; and boasted of himself, that he made them as they ought to be: which is a precept of Aristotle, given as well to poets as to painters. Phidias raised an admiration, even to astonishment, in those who beheld his statues, with the forms which he gave to his gods and heroes, by imitating the idea, rather than nature. And Cicero, speaking of him, affirms, that figuring Jupiter and Pallas, he did not contemplate any object from whence he took the likeness, but considered in his own mind a great and admirable form of beauty; and according to that image in his soul, he directed the operation of his hand. Seneca also seems to wonder, that Phidias, having never beheld either Jove or Pallas, yet could conceive their divine images in his mind. Apollonius Tyanæus says the same in other words,—that the fancy more instructs the painter, than the imitation; for the last makes only the things which it sees, but the first makes also the things which it never sees.

“Leon Battista Alberti tells us, that we ought not so much to love the likeness as the beauty, and to choose from the fairest bodies severally the fairest parts. Leonardo da Vinci instructs the painter to form this idea to himself; and Raffaelle, the greatest of all modern masters, writes thus to Castiglione, concerning his Galatea: ‘To paint a fair one, it is necessary for me to see many fair ones; but because there is so great a scarcity of lovely women, I am constrained to make use of one certain idea, which I have formed to myself in my own fancy.’ Guido Rheni sending to Rome his St Michael, which he had painted for the church of the Capuchins, at the same time wrote to Monsignor Massano, who was _Maestro di Casa_, (or Steward of the House,) to Pope Urban the Eighth, in this manner: ‘I wish I had the wings of an angel, to have ascended into Paradise, and there to have beheld the forms of those beautiful spirits, from which I might have copied my archangel. But not being able to mount so high, it was in vain for me to search his resemblance here below; so that I was forced to make an introspection into my own mind, and into that idea of beauty which I have formed in my own imagination. I have likewise created there the contrary idea of deformity and ugliness; but I leave the consideration of it, till I paint the devil; and in the mean time, shun the very thought of it as much as possibly I can, and am even endeavouring to blot it wholly out of my remembrance.’

“There was not any lady in all antiquity, who was mistress of so much beauty as was to be found in the Venus of Gnidus, made by Praxiteles, or the Minerva of Athens, by Phidias; which was therefore called the _beautiful form_. Neither is there any man of the present age equal in the strength, proportion, and knitting of his limbs, to the Hercules of Farnese, made by Glycon; or any woman, who can justly be compared with the Medicean Venus of Cleomenes. And upon this account, the noblest poets and the best orators, when they desired to celebrate any extraordinary beauty, are forced to have recourse to statues and pictures and to draw their persons and faces into comparison. Ovid, endeavouring to express the beauty of Cyllarus, the fairest of the Centaurs, celebrates him as next in perfection to the most admirable statues:

_Gratus in ore vigor, cervix, humerique, manusque,_
_Pectoraque artificum laudatis proxima signis._

A pleasing vigour his fair face expressed;
His neck, his hands, his shoulders, and his breast,
Did next, in gracefulness and beauty, stand
To breathing figures of the sculptor’s hand.

In another place he sets Apelles above Venus:

_Si Venerem Cous nunquam pinxisset Apelles,_
_Mersa sub æquoreis illa lateret aquis._

Thus varied:

One birth to seas the Cyprian goddess owed,
A second birth the painter’s art bestowed:
Less by the seas than by his power was given;
They made her live, but he advanced to heaven.

“The idea of this beauty is indeed various, according to the several forms which the painter or sculptor would describe; as one in strength, another in magnanimity: and sometimes it consists in cheerfulness, and sometimes in delicacy; and is always diversified by the sex and age.

“The beauty of Jove is one, and that of Juno another; Hercules and Cupid are perfect beauties, though of different kinds; for beauty is only that which makes all things as they are in their proper and perfect nature, which the best painters always choose by contemplating the forms of each. We ought farther to consider, that a picture being the representation of a human action, the painter ought to retain in his mind the examples of all affections and passions, as a poet preserves the idea of an angry man, of one who is fearful, sad, or merry, and so of all the rest; for it is impossible to express that with the hand, which never entered into the imagination. In this manner, as I have rudely and briefly shewn you, painters and sculptors, choosing the most elegant natural beauties, perfectionate the idea, and advance their art even above nature itself in her individual productions; which is the utmost mastery of human performance.

“From hence arises that astonishment, and almost adoration, which is paid by the knowing to those divine remainders of antiquity. From hence Phidias, Lysippus, and other noble sculptors, are still held in veneration; and Apelles, Zeuxis, Protogenes, and other admirable painters, though their works are perished, are and will be eternally admired; who all of them drew after the ideas of perfection, which are the miracles of nature, the providence of the understanding, the exemplars of the mind, the light of the fancy; the sun, which, from its rising, inspired the statue of Memnon, and the fire, which warmed into life the image of Prometheus. It is this, which causes the Graces and the Loves to take up their habitations in the hardest marble, and to subsist in the emptiness of light and shadows. But since the idea of eloquence is as far inferior to that of painting, as the force of words is to the sight, I must here break off abruptly, and having conducted the reader, as it were, to a secret walk, there leave him in the midst of silence, to contemplate those ideas which I have only sketched, and which every man must finish for himself.”

In these pompous expressions, or such as these, the Italian has given you his idea of a Painter; and though I cannot much commend the style, I must needs say, there is somewhat in the matter. Plato himself is accustomed to write loftily, imitating, as the critics tell us, the manner of Homer; but surely that inimitable poet had not so much of smoke in his writing, though not less of fire. But, in short, this is the present genius of Italy. What Philostratus tells us in the proem of his Figures,[115] is somewhat plainer; and therefore I will translate it almost word for word:—“He who will rightly govern the art of painting, ought of necessity first to understand human nature. He ought likewise to be endued with a genius to express the signs of their passions, whom he represents; and to make the dumb, as it were, to speak. He must yet further understand what is contained in the constitution of the cheeks, in the temperament of the eyes, in the naturalness (if I may so call it) of the eyebrows; and in short, whatsoever belongs to the mind and thought. He, who thoroughly possesses all these things, will obtain the whole; and the hand will exquisitely represent the action of every particular person. If it happen that he be either mad or angry, melancholic or cheerful, a sprightly youth or a languishing lover; in one word, he will be able to paint whatsoever is proportionable to any one. And even in all this there is a sweet error, without causing any shame; for the eyes and minds of the beholders being fastened on objects which have no real being, as if they were truly existent, and being induced by them to believe them so, what pleasure is it not capable of giving? The ancients, and other wise men, have written many things concerning the symmetry which is in the art of painting,—constituting, as it were, some certain laws for the proportion of every member; not thinking it possible for a painter to undertake the expression of those motions which are in the mind, without a concurrent harmony in the natural measure; for that which is out of its own kind and measure, is not received from nature, whose motion is always right. On a serious consideration of this matter, it will be found, that the art of painting has a wonderful affinity with that of poetry; and that there is betwixt them a certain common imagination. For, as the poets introduce the gods and heroes, and all those things which are either majestical, honest, or delightful, in like manner the painters, by the virtue of their outlines, colours, lights, and shadows, represent the same things and persons in their pictures.”

Thus, as convoy-ships either accompany or should accompany their merchants,[116] till they may prosecute the rest of their voyage without danger; so Philostratus has brought me thus far on my way, and I can now sail on without him. He has begun to speak of the great relation betwixt painting and poetry, and thither the greatest part of this discourse, by my promise, was directed. I have not engaged myself to any perfect method, neither am I loaded with a full cargo; it is sufficient if I bring a sample of some goods in this voyage. It will be easy for others to add more, when the commerce is settled; for a treatise twice as large as this of painting, could not contain all that might be said on the parallel of these two sister arts. I will take my rise from Bellori, before I proceed to the author of this book.

The business of his preface is to prove, that a learned painter should form to himself an idea of perfect nature. This image he is to set before his mind in all his undertakings, and to draw from thence, as from a storehouse, the beauties which are to enter into his work; thereby correcting nature from what actually she is in individuals, to what she ought to be, and what she was created. Now, as this idea of perfection is of little use in portraits, or the resemblances of particular persons, so neither is it in the characters of comedy and tragedy, which are never to be made perfect, but always to be drawn with some specks of frailty and deficience; such as they have been described to us in history, if they were real characters, or such as the poet began to shew them at their first appearance, if they were only fictitious or imaginary. The perfection of such stage-characters consists chiefly in their likeness to the deficient faulty nature, which is their original; only, as it is observed more at large hereafter, in such cases there will always be found a better likeness and a worse, and the better is constantly to be chosen; I mean in tragedy, which represents the figures of the highest form amongst mankind. Thus in portraits, the painter will not take that side of the face, which has some notorious blemish in it; but either draw it in profile, (as Apelles did Antigonus, who had lost one of his eyes,) or else shadow the more imperfect side; for an ingenious flattery is to be allowed to the professors of both arts, so long as the likeness is not destroyed. It is true, that all manner of imperfections must not be taken away from the characters; and the reason is, that there may be left some grounds of pity for their misfortunes. We can never be grieved for their miseries, who are thoroughly wicked, and have thereby justly called their calamities on themselves. Such men are the natural objects of our hatred, not of our commiseration. If, on the other side, their characters were wholly perfect, (such as, for example, the character of a saint or martyr in a play,) his or her misfortunes would produce impious thoughts in the beholders; they would accuse the heavens of injustice, and think of leaving a religion where piety was so ill requited. I say, the greater part would be tempted so to do, I say not that they ought; and the consequence is too dangerous for the practice. In this I have accused myself for my own St Catharine;[117] but let truth prevail. Sophocles has taken the just medium in his “Œdipus.” He is somewhat arrogant at his first entrance, and is too inquisitive through the whole tragedy; yet these imperfections being balanced by great virtues, they hinder not our compassion for his miseries; neither yet can they destroy that horror, which the nature of his crimes has excited in us. Such in painting are the warts and moles, which, adding a likeness to the face, are not therefore to be omitted; but these produce no loathing in us; but how far to proceed, and where to stop, is left to the judgment of the poet and the painter. In comedy there is somewhat more of the worse likeness to be taken, because that is often to produce laughter, which is occasioned by the sight of some deformity; but for this I refer the reader to Aristotle. It is a sharp manner of instruction for the vulgar, who are never well amended, till they are more than sufficiently exposed.