FIRST LECTURE.

11

Herculanean dancers and the figures on the earthen vafesof the ancients, will ceafe; or rather, we fhall nolonger fuffer ourfelvcs to be deluded by palpable im-pofiibility of execution: on a ground of levigated limeor on potters ware, no velocity or certainty attainableby human hands can conduct a full pencil with thatdegree of evennefs equal from beginning to end withwhich we fee thofe figures executed, or if it could,would ever be able to fix the line on the glafly furfacewithout its flowing: to make the appearances we fee,poflible, we muft have recourfe to the linear procefsthat has been defcribed, and transfer our admiration, tothe perfeverance, the correCtnefs of principle, the ele-gance of tafle that conduced the artift’s hand, withoutprefuming to arm it with contradictory powers: thefigures he drew and we admire, are not the magic pro-duce of a winged pencil, they are the refult of gradualimprovement, exquifitely finifhed monochroms.

How long the pencil continued only to aflift, when itbegan to engrofs and when it at lafi: entirely fupplantedthe ceftrum cannot, in the perplexity of accidental reportbe afcertained. Apollodorus in the 93d Olymp. andZeuxis in the 94th, are faid to haveufed it with freedomand with power. The battle of the Lapithas and theCentaurs, which according to Paufanias, Parrhafius

c 2 painted