34

FIRST LECTURE.

pared with chronologic proofs to decide whether Euri­ pides or Timanthes, who were contemporaries, about theperiod of the Peloponneflan war, fell firft on this expe-dient; though the filence of Pliny and Quintilian onthat head, feems to be in favour of the painter, neitherof whom could be ignorant of the celebrated drama ofEuripides , and would not willingly have fuffered thehonour of this mafter-ftroke of an art they were fo muchbetter acquainted with than painting, to be transferredto another from its real author, had the poet’s claimbeen prior: nor {hall I urge that the picture of Timan-thes was crowned with victory by thofe who were indaily habits of aflifting at the dramas of Euripides ,without having their verdict impeached by Colotes orhis friends, who would not have failed to avail them-felves of lo flagrant a proof of inferiority as the wantof invention, in the work of his rival:—I fhall onlvafk, what is invention? if it be the combination ofthe moft important moment of a fact with the mod;varied effects of the reigning paflion on the charactersintroduced—the invention of Timanthes conflfled infhewing, by the gradation of that paflion in the faces ofthe afliftant mourners, the reafon why that of the prin-cipal one, was hid. This he performed, and this thepoet, whether prior or fubfequent, did not and couldnot do, but left it with a filent appeal to our own mind3 and