FIRST LECTURE.

35

and fancy. The cad of Agamemnon ’s features mightbe gueffed at from thofe of his brother Menelaus , whichwere fhewn, but the degree of fympathy which pal-pitated in the bread: and agitated the features of theuncle, without dedroying dignity, fixed the limits ofpathos; whild the pangs that rent the heart and con-vulfed or abforbed the features of the father, the preyof momentary defpair and horrour, overleapt thofe limits,and could only have fhocked us by being admitted toour eye.

In prefuming to differ on the propriety of this modeof exprefiion in the picture of Timanthes from therefpeftable authority I have quoted, I am far from awilh to invalidate the equally pertinent and acute re-marks made on the danger of its imitation, though Iam decidedly of opinion that it is dridtly within thelimits of our art. If it be a ‘ trick’ it is certainly onethat ‘ has ferved more than once.’—We find it adoptedto exprefs the grief of a beautiful female figure on abafforelievo formerly in the palace Valle at Rome, andpreferved in the Admiranda of S. Bartoli; it is ufed,though with his own originality, by Michael Angelo inthe figure of Abijam to mark unutterable woe. Raphael ,to drew that he thought it the bed podible mode of ex-prefiing remorfe and the deeped fenfe of repentance,

f 2 borrowed