of art, not as an imitation, but as an independent existence; while, in other cases, the artist and the poet having both adopted the same ideas, their representations naturally exhibit a degree of resemblance, attributable only to the universality of the ideas which each had selected to work on.

But when Tibullus delineates Apollo, as he appeared to him in a dream; when he sings to us of the "lovely youth whose brows are encircled with the chaste laurel; whose golden hair, floating around his slender neck, is redolent of Syrian perfumes; and whose body is tinged throughout with brilliant white and purple red, mingling like the blush on the tender cheek of the bride, when conducted to the presence of her beloved,"—what reason is there to infer that the poet has borrowed his description from celebrated ancient pictures? Echion's "nova nupta, verecundiâ notabilis" may have been seen in Rome, and may have been copiedover and over again, but are we therefore to conclude that the "bridal blush" itself was no longer to be found in nature? When once it

had been expressed by the Painter, was the Poet doomed never to behold it, except through the medium of the picture ?* Again, when another poet describes Vulcan wearied with his work, and with his countenance of a fiery redness from the heat of the forge, are we to believe that he had learnt for the first time from the work of a painter that the natural effect of labor is to fatigue, and of heat to redden ? Or, when Lucretius describes the variation of the seasons, and all the consequences of their operations in the sky and on the earth, is it necessary to suppose that he was obliged to borrow all his ideas from a procession in which the statues of the seasons were carried about;—as if, like an ephemeron, his own life had been too brief to witness for himself the changes of a year?— Are we to conclude that the sight of these statues made him for the first time acquainted with the old poetical artifice of embodying such abstract images in material forms?

And

* Tibullus, Eleg. 4, lib. iii. Polymetis, Dial. viii., p. 84. † Statius, lib. i., Sylv. 5, v. 8. Polym., Dial. viii, p. 81. See Note 26, end of volume.

Virgil's "Pontem indignatus Araxes," that admirable poetical picture of a river overflowing its banks, and sweeping away in a mighty torrent the bridge which had been thrown across it,— does it not at once lose all its beauty, if we are obliged to believe that the poet is merely describing a work of art, in which the river god was actually represented breaking down a bridge by force of hand ?* Such illustrations as these are a mere waste of time; their only effect is to supplant some of the clearest passages of the poet by the corresponding idea of an artist.

It is much to be regretted that a work so capable of being rendered useful as Polymetis, should have been so much injured by the tasteless concept of attributing to the ancient poets an acquaintance with other men's fancies, rather than a reliance on their own; a blemish which has rendered it far more injurious to the character of the classical writers than the insipid expositions of the dullest commentator could

*

Æneid, lib. vii., v. 725. Polym., Dialog. xiv., p. 230.

ever have proved. But it is still more lamentable, that Addison himself should have set the example to Spence in this respect, when, with a laudable desire to convert an acquaintance with the ancient works of art into a means of illustration, he equally neglects to distinguish the cases in which the imitation of the artist is advantageous to the poet, from those in which it is prejudicial.*

* In various passages of his Journey, and his Essay on Ancient Medals.

EIGHTH SECTION.

Difficulties and Inconsistencies into which Spence has been led by the System deprecated in the foregoing Section.

Spence seems to have formed the most extraordinary notion of the resemblance which exists between the arts of Poetry and Painting. He fancies that the two arts were so intimately blended by the ancients, that they went always hand in hand, and that neither the Poet nor the Painter ever lost sight of each other. That the dominion of the Poet extends over a wider sphere than that of the Painter,—that he can command beauties which painting can never attain,—that he may frequently have good reason to prefer unpictorial beauties to those of an opposite character,—are circumstances on which our author does not seem to have reflected; and the consequence is, that whenever any little difference is observable