of Achilles, on the contrary, is the growth of its own fruitful soil: for a shield was to be made; and, since nothing that is necessary comes from the band of the divinity without grace also, it must needs have ornament. But the art lay in treating these decorations merely as such, in interweaving them into the main subject, and making it furnish the opportunity of showing them to us: all this could only be accomplished in the style of Homer. Homer makes Vulcan expend his skill upon the shield, that he may produce one which should be worthy of him. Virgil, on the other hand, appears to make him forge the shield for the sake of its decorations, since he considers them of sufficient importance to be described particularly, after the shield has been long completed.

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CHAPTER XVIII.

But supposing Homer himself should be found to have fallen into this cold description of material objects?

I venture to hope, that there are few passages, which will justify his being cited as an authority in its favour; and I feel assured that these will prove to be of such a kind as to confirm the rule, from which they appear to be exceptions.

We conclude, then, that succession of time is the department of the poet, as space is that of the painter.

To introduce two necessarily distant points of time into one and the same painting, as Fr. Mazzuoli has the rape of the Sabine women and their subsequent reconciliation of their husbands and relations, or, as Titian has the whole history of the prodigal son, his disorderly life, his misery, and his repentance, is an encroachment upon the sphere of the poet, which good taste could never justify.

To enumerate one by one to the reader, in order to afford him an idea of the whole, several parts or things, which, if they are to produce a whole in nature, I must necessarily take in at one glance, is an encroachment of the poet upon the sphere of the

painter, whereby he squanders much imagination to no purpose.

The connection between painting and poetry may be compared to that of two equitable neighbouring powers, who permit not that the one should presume to take unbecoming freedom within the heart of the dominions of the other, yet on their frontiers practise a mutual forbearance, by which both sides render a peaceful compensation for those slight aggressions, which, in haste or from the force of circumstances, they have found themselves compelled to make on one another's privileges.

In support of this view I will not cite the fact, that in great historical pictures, the single moment is almost always extended; and that perhaps there is scarcely any piece, very rich in figures, in which every one of them is in the same motion and attitude, in which he would have been at the moment of the main action, some being represented in the posture of a little earlier, others in that of a little later period. This freedom the master must rectify by a certain refinement in the arrangement, by bringing his several characters either prominently forwards, or placing them in the back ground, which has the effect of making the part they take in what is passing appear more or less transitory. This, I say, I do not quote in my support, but will merely avail myself of some remarks, which Herr Mengs has made upon Raphael's drapery. “There is a cause," he says, "for all his folds, either

"in their own weight, or in the motion of the limbs. "We can often tell from the former, what has been

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"the previous attitude of the latter. Raphael has

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even sought to give significance to these folds.

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We

can see from them whether a leg or arm, previously "to its movement, was in a backward or forward posture; whether a limb had been, or was in the act "of being, straightened; or whether it had been "straight, and was being contracted." It is indisputable that in this case the artist combines two different moments in one. For, as that part of the drapery, which rested upon the hinder foot, would, unless the material were very thick and entirely unsuitable for painting, immediately follow it in its motion forwards, there is no moment, at which the garment can form any other folds, than those, which the present attitude of the limb requires; and, if it is made to fall in other folds, the limb is represented at the present moment, and the drapery at the one previous to it. Yet who could censure the artist for having presented us with both these moments at once? Who would not sooner praise him for having had the understanding and courage to fall into a slight error for the sake of attaining great perfection of expression?

The poet deserves similar indulgence. His progressive imitation properly permits him to deal with only one side, one property of his material object, at Reflections on Beauty and Taste in Painting, p. 69.

a

a time. But, when the happy arrangement of his language enables him to do this with a single word, why should he not now and then venture to subjoin a second? Why not, if it requites the trouble, a third, or even a fourth? I have already remarked that in Homer, for example, a ship is only the black ship, or the hollow ship, or the swift ship; at the very most, the well-manned black ship. I wish, however, to be understood as speaking of his style generally; here and there a passage may be found, where he adds the third descriptive epithet. καμπύλα κύκλα, χάλ kea, oktákynμa,Þ round, bronze, eight-spoked wheels. Also where the fourth ἀσπίδα πάντοσε εΐσην, καλήν, Xaλkeiŋv, eέýλatov, "a beautiful, brazen, wrought, all-even shield." Who would censure him for it? who is not rather grateful to him for this little luxuriancy, when he feels what a good effect it may produce in some few suitable passages.

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But I will not allow the peculiar justification either of the poet or the painter to rest upon the abovementioned analogy of two friendly neighbours. A mere analogy proves and justifies nothing. Their real justification is the fact, that in the work of the painter the two different moments border so closely upon one another, that, without hesitating, we count them as one; and that in the poetry the several features, representing the various parts and properties in space, follow one another with such speed and b Iliad, E. v. 722. e Iliad, M. xii. 294.