bones and sinews, and anatomize a Venus. It has been said, happy is he that does not know he has a stomach; we may say, doubly unhappy is he who, in looking at a picture of a Centaur, should discover that he has two. You are disenchanted by your knowledge, it has deadened your imagination. You would be incredulous of any fruit but pippins, in the fabulous Hesperides. You would bark in return at all Cerberus's heads, and pass on, never believing that you would meet the ghost of Achilles in the Elysian fields, and converse with him on glory. The waking dream of poetry must not be for you. You must always pass condemnation on our best poets and painters, if you cannot so master your mind as to throw it into a belief. What to you would be Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, and the young Satyr-god dragging the captured head? What Raffaelle's Archangel treading upon the Great Enemy? Would you not see the impossibility of make and muscle to support his wings, as you do that of the twobodied Centaur? Poor Ovid! and all the poets and painters that have followed him, you would burn all their metamor- . phoses. The beautiful Circe, too, you will not acknowledge a swine of her making. You can pass with an unpalpitating heart between Scylla and Charybdis. But you are not to be envied. The fact is, in the better half of poetry we are not called upon to know but to believe-to believe even against knowledge; a belief that borrows more from our feelings, and perhaps our better ones, than from our understandings. You cannot love truly with this ever-vigilant, prying knowledge, for to do so you must take something for granted, and borrow a few fascinations from imagination. So, my good friend, if you go on at this rate, you will strip yourself bare indeed; you will have no confidence in hidden virtues. Go not to a theatre, for if the fit lasts, you will see nothing but the actors; you will not shed a tear over Lear and Cordelia, for you will know they are but mimes. Nay, you must hourly call yourself to task for the very language you use, lest you deal in hyperbole, in trope and figure. Now tell me, is not all this abandonment against your nature? you have really not considered the subject sufficiently. Are you prepared to give up all that is shown, from the drift of your arguments, you must give up? Knowledge makes even charity cold; you had better give your pence to a good actor than discover every cheat. But be consistent; burn every work of imagination that demands of you a prior belief, (and you shall have a small library) or admit even Centaurs within the pale of credibility... NAT. You have lectured me finely, and have said as much for your Centaurs as can be said. " IDE. By no means. There is much more to be said the better half is unsaid; for even courts of justice how to precedent-there is authority in their favour. Do you really forget the great statuary--the noble battle of the Lapithe and Centaurs ? even, you see, in hard solid marble has the great idea been perpetuated. But I will give you an example in painting. Let us look for Lucian's description of the copy of a picture by Zeuxis, which he saw at Athens, of a female Centaur. Here it is. NAT. And, with the original, hand down the translation. Franklin's, I see? IDE. I shall read it.. NAT. By all means. IDE. Thus, then, saith Lucian I will tell you a story of Zeuxis. That famous painter seldom chose to handle trite and common subjects, such as heroes, gods, and battles; but always endeavoured to strike out something new, and exerted all his art and skill upon it. Among other things he painted a female Centaur, with two young ones. There is an exact copy of it now at Athens; the original was said to have been sent into Italy by Sylla, the Roman general, and lost at sea with the whole cargo, somewhere, I believe, near Malta. The copy, however, I have seen, and will describe to you; not that I pretend to be a judge of pictures, but because when I saw it, in a painter's collection there, it made a strong impression on me, and I perfectly recollect every part of it. The Centauris lying down on a smooth turf; that part which représents a mare is stretched on the ground, with the hind feet extended backwards The fore feet not reaching out as VOL. III. 16 if she lay on her side, but one of them as kneeling, with the hoof bent under, the other raised up, and trampling on the grass, like a horse prepared to leap. She holds one of the young ones in her arms, and suckles it like a child at her woman's breast, and the other at her dugs like a colt. In the further part of the picture is seen a male Centaur, as watching from a place of observation, supposed to be the father, showing a lion's cub, which he lifts up as if to frighten the young ones in sport. With regard to correctness in drawing, the colouring, light and shade, symmetry, proportion, and other beauties of this picture, as I am not a sufficient judgé of the art, I leave it to painters, whose business it is to explain and illustrate them. What I principally admire in Zeuxis, is his showing so much variety, and all the riches of his art, in the management of one subject, representing a man so fierce and terrible, the hair so nobly disheveled, rough and flowing over the shoulders where it joins the horse, and the countenance, though smiling, amazingly wild and savage. The female Centaur is a most beautiful mare of Thessalian breed, such as had been never ridden or tamed. All the upper part resembling a very handsome woman, except the ears, which are like a satyrs that part of the figure, where the body of the woman joins to that of the horse, incorporating as it were insensibly, and by slow degrees, so that you can scarce mark the transition, deceiving the sight most agreeably. The ferocity, that appears in the young ones, is moreover admirably expressed; as well as the childish innocence in their countenances when they look towards the young lion, clinging at the same time to the breast, and getting as close as possible to their mother. Does not this description reconcile you to the Centaurs even more than the Phygaleian marbles? How admirably does Lucian criticise the picture, feeling every beauty! I The Hippo-Centaur, looking on at his infants, and holding up the lion's cub to frighten them. The look, all wild and saNage, of the laughing mountain mán-beast: How well the man is defined, and the brute! How beautiful the female, and how well the human body blends with that of the horse. Lucian, and sof course Zeuxis, you perceive, saw, as well as you and all other naturalists, the impossibility of the junction of the two bodies, and directs your attention to the wonderful art with which you are cheated into a belief of it. Lucian claims as a merit what you would make an objection. How nicely he notices, particularly as being most wonderful in effect, the expression of the infants at the breast, still feeding, childishly at the lion's cub, which the father is holding up to terrify them, and to observe the effects. Does not all this variety, the infants, and the incident of the lion's cub, avert your attention from any impossibility?—and how artfully managed? Zeuxis, Lucian tells was disgusted that the novelty of the subject only was admired, and not his mode of treating it. The mud, the dirt, of the art they only admire. All else but the novelty did Zeuxis in vain; yet not in vain, for you are judges of painting, and see every thing with a knowledge of art, provided it be worthy an exhibition. us, NAT. The description is at any rate beautiful, and I know you will take advantage of that admission, and say the description is the picture; so I must yield myself up, at least for the present, to believe any thing to be natural. -- IDE. That is more than I ask ;-but come, Lucian had a sane judgment, loved pictures, and has given descriptions of a · few shall we look into them?-you will be called to believe more impossibilities. We will take his dialogue of Zephyrus and Notus-his picture; and Paul Veronese never painted better. «Zephyrus. Europa wandered to the sea-shore, to divert herself with her companions, when Jupiter, putting on the form of a bull, came and sported with them. Most beautiful did he appear, for he was milk-white, his countenance mild and gentle, and his horns turned back in the most graceful manner; he leaped and played about the shore, and lowed so delightfully, that Europa ventured to get upon him. Jupiter immediately ran off with her as fast as possible into the sea, and swam away. She was frightened out of her wits ; with one hand laid hold of his horn that she might not fall off, and with the other took up her robes that were tossed about by the wind. » Notus. It must have been a charming sight, Zephyrus, to see Jupiter swimming and carrying his beloved. » " : Zephyrus. But what followed was still more delightful. The sea became placid, and, lulled as it were into tranquillity, resembled a smooth and unruffled plain; we, as silent spectators only, accompanied them. The loves, hovering round them, and sometimes just touching the waves with their feet, bore lighted torches, and sung hymeneals. The nereids, halfnaked, rising from the water, rode on the backs of dolphins, and joined in the chorus of applause. The tritons and sea nymphs, all that the element could produce of grace or beauty, sported and sung around. Neptune himself, ascending his chariot with Amphitrite, led the way rejoicing, and was bridesman to his happy brother. Above all, two tritons carrying Venus reclining in her shell, and scattering flowers of every kind in the way before the bride thus they proceeded from Phoenicia quite to Crete. When they arrived at the island, Jupiter appeared no longer in the form of a bull; but, in his own, taking Europa by the hand, led her blushing and with downcast eyes into the Dictaan cave. We returned to the sea; and, according to our several departments, moved the waves of it. Notus. Happy, thrice happy art thou; Zephyrus, to have seen such a sight, whilst I was employed in looking at griffins, elephants, and blacks." Here are pictures that many have been painted after this description, in words and colours, and not the least worthy the fascinating Ariosto. There is, by-the-by, a pretty little Greek idyll taken from this tale of Europa, that Gibson the sculptor would make much of. It is of Cupid turned ploughman, and, while sowing, he sees and knows Jupiter in his bull form, looks back and threatens him, that if he doesn't mind what he is about, he will put his neck in the yoke. Is not this a subject for sculpture, the god-bull, what a form-and the arch-god love? But you remember Lucian's picture of Luna and Endymion, in the dialogue between Venus and Luna. The Greek is all gentleness of most moonlight sleep, and silver-shaded light. You think Endymion then, said Venus, beautiful ? Luna-To me, I confess he appears charming, especially when, throwing his garment on the rock, he goes to sleep, his arrows in his left hand, that seem drooping from him, त |