Buch 
Three Dissertations : ; One On the Characters of Augustus, Horace and Agrippa, With a Comparison between His two Ministers ... / by the Abbe de Vertot ... to which is added Some Reflections ... by the Earl of Shaftsbury. Another On the Gallery of Verres / by the Abbe Fraguier, in which many excellent Pieces of ancient Statuary, Sculpture and Painting are described. A Third On the Nature, Origin and Use of Masks, in theatrical Representations among the Ancients. by Mr. Boindin ... / [translated by George Turnbull]
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e xact Tones and Measures; by which he justly repre-sents them, marks the sublime of the Sentiments andAction, and distinguishes the Beautiful from the Defor -med, the Amiable from the Odious* The moral Artist,who can thus imitate the Creator, and is thus knowingin the inward Form and Structure os his Fellow-creature,will hardly, I presume, be found unknowing in himself,or at a Loss in those Numbers which make the Har-mony of a Mind. For Knavery is mere Dissonance and"Disproportion . And tho’ Villains may have strong Tonesand natural Capacities of Action; 'tis impossible that trueJudgment and Ingenuity should reside, where Harmonyand Honesty have no Being.

So much the Poet must necessarily borrow of the Phi-losopher, as to be Master of the common Topicks ofMorality, and to have a Sense of that moral Truth, onwhich poetick Truth and Beauty must naturally depend.

ui didicit patriœ quid debeat , & quid amicis ,

Quo ft amore par ens ^ quo frater amandus et hospes y^uodfit conscripti, quod judicis ojficium

- ille profeSlo.

Reddere personce scit convenientia cuiq ;

He must, at least, be speciously honest, and in all Ap-pearance, a Friend to Virtue throughout his Poem. TheGood and Wife will abate him nothing in this Kind.And the People, tho' corrupt, are in the main best satis-fied with this Conduct.

- Speciosa