EPISTLE

T

TO

MR. JERVAS,

WITH MR. DRYDEN'S TRANSLATION OF FRESNOY'S
ART OF PAINTING.

HIS Verse be thine, my friend, nor thou refuse
This, from no venal or ungrateful Muse.

Whether thy hand strike out fome free design,
Where Life awakes, and dawns at ev'ry line;
Or blend in beauteous tints the colour'd mafs,
And from the canvass call the mimic face :
Read these instructive leaves, in which confpire
Fresnoy's close Art, and Dryden's native Fire:

NOTES.

5

And

Epiftle to Mr. Jorvas) This Epistle and the two following were written some years before the rest, and originally printed in 1717.

P.

Jervas owed much more of his reputation to this Epistle than to his skill as a painter. "He was defective," says Mr. Walpole, " in drawing, colouring, and composition; his pictures are a light, flimzy, kind of fan-painting, as large as the life; his vanity was exceffive." The reason why Lady Bridgewater's name is so frequently repeated in this Epistle, is, because Jervas affected to be violently in love with her. As she was fitting to him one day, he ran over the beauties of her face with rapture; but added, "I cannot help telling your Ladyship you have not an handsome ear." "No!-Pray, Mr. Jervas, what is a handsome ear?" He turned afide his cap, and shewed his own!

And reading wish, like theirs, our fate and fame,
So mix'd our studies, and so join'd our name;
Like them to shine through long succeeding age,
So just thy skill, so regular my rage.

10

Smit with the love of Sister-Arts we came, And met congenial, mingling flame with flame; Like friendly colours found them both unite, And each from each contract new strength and light.

15

How oft' in pleasing tasks we wear the day,

While fummer-funs roll unperceiv'd away?

How oft our flowly-growing works impart,

While Images reflect from art to art?

20

How oft review; each finding like a friend
Something to blame, and something to commend?
What flatt'ring scenes our wand'ring fancy wrought,
Rome's pompous glories rising to our thought!
Together o'er the Alps methinks we fly,
Fir'd with Ideas of fair Italy.

With thee, on Raphael's Monument I mourn,
Or wait inspiring Dreams at Maro's Urn :

25

With thee repose, where Tully once was laid,
Or seek fome Ruin's formidable shade:

30

While

NOTES.

genius and imagination; the one excelled in beauty, the other in energy. Michael Angelo has more of the poetical inspiration, his ideas are vast and fublime, his people are a superior order of beings; there is nothing about them, nothing in the air of their actions, or their attitudes, or the style and cast of their very limbs or features, that puts one in mind of their belonging to our own species. Raffaelle's imagination is not so elevated; his figures are not so much disjoined from our own diminutive race of beings, though his ideas are chaste, noble, and of great conformity to their fubjects. Michael Angelo's works have a strong, peculiar, and marked character; they seem to proceed from his own mind entirely, and that mind so rich and abundant, that he never needed, or seemed to difdain, to look abroad for foreign help. Raffaelle's materials are generally borrowed, though the noble structure is his own.

The excellency of this extraordinary man lay in the propriety, beauty, and majesty of his characters, his judicious contrivance of his compofition, correctness of drawing, purity of taste, and the skilful accommodation of other men's conceptions to his own purpose. Nobody excelled him in that judgement, with which he united to his own observations on nature the energy of Michael Angelo, and the beauty and fimplicity of the antique. To the question therefore, which ought to hold the first rank, Raffaelle or Michael Angelo, it must be answered, that if it is given to him who poffefsed a greater combination of the higher qualities of the art than any other man, there is no doubt but Raffaelle is the first. But if, according to Longinus, the fublime, being the highest excellence that human composition can attain to, abundantly compenfates the absence of every other beauty, and atones for all other deficiencies, then Michael Angelo demands the preference.

"These two extraordinary men carried fome of the higher excellencies of the art to a higher degree of perfection than probably they ever arrived at before. They certainly have not been excelled, por equalled fince. Many of their fuccessors were induced to leave

While Fancy brings the vanish'd piles to view,

And builds imaginary Rome a-new,

Here thy well-study'd marbles fix our eye;

A fading Fresco here demands a sigh;

Each heav'nly piece unwearied we compare,
Match Raphael's grace with thy lov'd Guido's air,
Carracci's strength, Correggio's softer line,
Paulo's free stroke, and Titian's warmth divine.

35

How finish'd with illustrious toil appears! This small, well-polish'd Gem, the work of years!

Yet

NOTES.

this great road as a beaten path, endeavouring to surprise and please by fomething uncommon or new. When this defire after novelty has proceeded from mere idleness or caprice, it is not worth the trouble of criticism; but when it has been in consequence of a busy mind, of a peculiar complexion, it is always striking and interefting, never infipid.

"Such is the great style as it appears in those who possessed it at its height, in this, search after novelty, in conception or in treating the fubject, has no place."

VER. 30. Or feek] This last line is inferior to the three preceding ones: because it passes from particular images to something general.

VER. 33. Well-fludy'd marbles] Jervas was sent to Italy at the expence of Dr. Clarke, Member of Parliament for the University of Oxford, of All-Souls College.

VER.37. Carracci's] "Give me a good outline, and bricks in the middle," said Annibal Carracci. Agostino has left an elegant fonnet on painting. Sir Joshua Reynolds told me he did not think these artists exactly characterized by Pope.

VER. 39. How finish'd] Mr. Mason has translated Fresnoy with elegance and fidelity; and Sir Joshua Reynolds added to the translation learned, useful, scientifical, and ingenious notes.

" Guido,"

41

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 45
An Angel's sweetness, or Bridgewater's eyes.

Muse!

NOTES.

" Guido," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, (Discourses, p. 155.), " from want of choice in adapting his subject to his ideas and powers, or in attempting to preserve beauty where it could not be preserved, has in this one point succeeded very ill. His figures are often engaged in subjects that required great expreffion; yet his Judith and Holofernes, the daughter of Herodias, with the Baptift's Head; the Andromeda, and even the Mothers of the Innocents, have little more expression than his Venus attired by the Graces.”

And Mr. Webb observes, with his usual taste and penetration, "that Guido's Angel treads on Satan with all the preciseness and affected air of a modern dancing-mafter."

Few writers have succeeded in speaking of the fine arts. M. Falconet condemns what Tully has faid on this subject in many of his epistles. Sir Joshua Reynolds told me more than once he did not approve of the thirty-ninth book of Pliny's Natural History. He thought that Quintilian, in the tenth chapter of his twelfth book, had spoken with more taste and precifion than any other ancient author on painting. There are three dialogues of Fenelon on this subject exquifitely written,

VER. 40. The work of years!] Fresnoy employed above twenty years in finishing his poem,

P.

VER. 43. Strike in the Sketch, Gray, in his verses to Mr. Bentley, has beautifully expressed and described the perfon and defign: " See, in their course, each tranfitory thought, Fix'd by his touch a lafting essence take; Each dream, in fancy's airy colouring wrought, To local symmetry and life awake."

Works, 4to.