FIRST LECTURE.

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* in his mind, and confidered as indifpenfably belong-4 ing to the fubjeCt. But it may be obferved, that4 thofe who praife this circumftance were not painters.4 They ufe it as an illustration only of their own art;

* it ferved their purpofe, and it was certainly not their4 bufinefs to enter into the objections that lie againSt it4 in another Art. I fear we have but very fcanty means4 of exciting thofe powers over the imagination, which4 make fo very considerable and refined a part of poetry.4 It is a doubt with me, whether we Should even make4 the attempt. The chief, if not the only occafion4 which the painter has for this artifice, is, when the4 fubjedt is improper to be more fully reprefented,4 either for the fake of decency, or to avoid what4 would be difagreeable to be feen ; and this is not to4 raife or increafe the paffions, which is the reafon that4 is given for this practice, but on the contrary to di-4 minifh their effeCt.’

4 Mr. Falconet has obferved, in a note on this paflage4 in his translation of Pliny , that the circumfhnce of4 covering the face of Agamemnon was probably not in4 confequence of any fine imagination of the painter,—4 which he confiders as a difcovery of the critics,—4 but merely copied from the defcription of the facri-4 fice, as it is found in Euripides.

4 The

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