they beautified what remained to the highest degree of perfection.

A beautiful and amorous, princefs, whofe name was Venus, was born in one of the Greek iflands. She had three amiable maids of honour who were fifters, and these were the Graces. This is all the foundation given by nature and truth; the Greek imagination created the reft. The poets first made this princefs a divinity, and, to fublime their idea, fabled her fprung from the ocean. I need not tell you all they have said of her; you know it already. The painters of Greece then painted her from imagination. But, alas! canvafs is perifhable; and thefe pictures are no longer to be feen. One portrait of her, how

ever, fortunately, ftill remains. I mean one good likeness; for there are innumerable Venuses: but the Venus of Medici is the only one which fills the imagination at once with an idea of Greek genius, and of perfect beauty.

The author of this ftatue faid to himfelf, I have a Goddess to create; and "that Goddess is the Goddefs of Love. "She must be a perfect Beauty. But "no fuch being has ever existed. I "have no refource left but to create "her myself." He then ftudied, in the most beautiful women of his country, the parts in which each particular woman excelled. He faw what conftituted a perfect foot; a hand and arm; a neck and bofom; and after he had made him

felf

self master of each part, he, by a fingular effort of genius, combined them with the jufteft fymmetry into a perfect Whole. As happy an idea as ever entered into an artift's head; and, I think, as difficult to execute.

Beauty was evidently the first idea for the Goddess of Love. But beauty alone, this refined Greek well knew, was infipid without grace, and uninteresting without character. His next thought confequently was, that by fhewing his divinity in an happy moment, he would make grace, expreffion, character, all fpring from that moment, in fo eafy a manner, that it fhould appear to have coft no effort; and in fo natural a manner, that it fhould feem impoffible to

have found another. He fhews her then in the inftant the rifes from the fea; and throwing himself, as it were, into her foul, he difcovers in her countenance what must have been it's first emotion. It is that of Modefty. There is the character at once determined, expreffion

given to the ftatue, all the parts difpofed of with decency and propriety; and, to render his production perfect, the whole conveying a refined and elegant moral, that Love can only be infpired by the union of Beauty with Modefty.

This is a great excellency in the Greek artifts of every kind; they have always a moral. They have too a happiness in chufing a moment to fhew an object, of which other artifts have fcarce

3

fcarce ever thought. They fnatched the nice points of time, in which, whatever they had to exhibit, was to be seen to the greatest advantage. They carried this attention, as well as that of character, even to animals. The head of the boar, at Meleager's feet, is that of a fierce favage, that defolated an entire country, and ftruck with terror all it's inhabitants. Had they a ftork to fhew? It is in the moment he is in conflict with a ferpent, which twifts itself in the most natural and graceful writhings about the neck of his feathered enemy. Was an eagle to be their fubject? He is fhewn in the inftant that he is going to dart himfelf from a rock, and foar above the clouds. His air announces that he is the

VOL. II.

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king