PREFACE.

. But that which may have puzzled this matter most,may be, that Vandyke, one of the best portrait paintersin most respects ever known, plainly appears not to havehad a thought of this kind. For there seems not to bethe least grace in his pictures more than what the lifechanced to bring before him. There is a print of theDutchefs of Wharton (fig. 52, plate 2,) engraved byVan Gunst, from a true picture by him, which is tho-roughly divested of every elegance. Now, had he knownthis line as a principle, he could no more have drawnall the parts of this picture so contrary to it, than Mr.Addifon could have wrote a whole spectator in falsegrammar; unless it were done on purpose. However,on account of his other great excellencies, painterschuse to stile this want of grace in his attitudes, &c.simplicity , and indeed they do often very justly meritthat epithet.

Nor have the painters of the present times been lessuncertain and contradictory to each other, than themasters already mentioned, whatever they may pretendto the contrary: of this I had a mind to be certain,, andtherefore, in the year 1745, published a frontispiece tomy engraved works, in which I drew a serpentine linelying on a painter’s pallet, with these words under it,the line of beautv. The >bait soon took; and noEgyptian hierogliphic ever amused more than it did fora time, painters and sculptors came to me to know the

meaning