was so, it lay long neglected, and would certainly have never been made public, had not Sir Joshua Reynolds requested a sight of it, and made an obliging offer of illustrating it by a series of his own notes. This prompted me to revise it with all possible accuracy; and as I had preserved the strictures which my late excellent friend Mr. Gray had made many years before on the version, as it then stood, I attended to each of them in their order with that deference which every criticism of his must demand. Besides this, as much more time was now elapsed since I had perused the copy, my own eye was become more open to its defects. I found the rule which my author had given to his Painter full as useful to a writer :

"Ast ubi consilium deerit sapientis amici,

Id tempus dabit, atque mora intermissa labori."

And I may say, with truth, that having become from this circumstance as impartial, if not as fastidious, to my own work, as any other critic could possibly have been, I hardly left a single line in it without giving it what I thought an emendation. It is not, therefore, as a juvenile work that I now present it to the public; but as one which I have improved to the utmost of my mature abilities, in order to make it more worthy of its Annotator.

In the preceding Epistle I have obviated, I hope, every suspicion of arrogance in attempting this work after Mr. Dryden. The single consideration that his version was in prose were in itself sufficient; because, as Mr. Pope has justly observed, verse and even rhyme is the best mode of conveying preceptive truths,“ as in this way they are more shortly expressed and more easily retained." * Still less need I make an apology

* See his Advertisement before his Essay on Man.

for undertaking it after Mr. Wills, who, in the year 1754, published a translation of it in metre without rhyme.*

This gentleman, a Painter by profession, assumed for his motto,

Tractant fabrilia fabri;

but however adroit he might be in handling the tools of his own art, candour must own that the tools of a Poet and a translator were beyond his management : attempting also a task absolutely impossible, that of expressing the sense of his author in an equal number of lines, he produced a version, which (if it was ever read through by any person except myself) is now totally forgotten. Nevertheless, I must do him the justice to own, that he understood the original text; that he detected some errors in Mr. Dryden's translation, which had escaped Mr. Jervas (assisted, as it is said, by his friend Mr. Pope) in that corrected edition which Mr. Graham inscribed to the Earl of Burlington; and that I have myself sometimes profited by his labours. It is also from his edition that I reprint the following life of the Author, which was drawn up from Felibien and other Biographers by the late Dr. Birch, who, with his usual industry, has collected all they have said on Fresnoy's subject.

* I call it so rather than blank verse, because it was devoid of all harmony of numbers. The beginning, which I shall here insert, is a sufficient proof of the truth of this assertion:

As Painting, Poesy, so similar

To Poesy be Painting: emulous

Alike, each to her sister doth refer,

Alternate change the office and the name;

Mute verse is this, that speaking picture call'd.

From this little specimen the reader will easily form a judgment of the whole.

THE

LIFE

OF

MONS. DU FRESNOY.

CHARLES ALPHONSE DU FRESNOY was born at Paris in the year 1611. His father, who was an eminent apothecary in that city, intending him for the profession of physic, gave him as good an education as possible. During the first year, which he spent at the college, he made a very considerable progress in his studies; but as soon as he was raised to the higher classes, and began to contract a taste of poetry, his genius for it opened itself, and he carried all the prizes in it, which were proposed to excite the emulation of his fellow-students. His inclination for it was heightened by exercise; and his earliest performances showed, that he was capable of becoming one of the greatest poets of his age, if his love of painting, which equally possessed him, had not divided his time and application. At last he laid aside all thoughts of the study of physic, and declared absolutely for that of painting, notwithstanding the opposition of his parents, who, by all kinds of severity, endeavoured to divert him from pursuing his passion for that art, the profession of which they unjustly considered in a very con

temptible light. But the strength of his inclination defeating all the measures taken to suppress it, he took the first opportunity of cultivating his favourite study.

He was nineteen or twenty years of age when he began to learn to design under Francis Perier; and having spent two years in the school of that painter, and of Simon Voüet, he thought proper to take a journey into Italy, where he arrived in the end of 1633, or the beginning of 1634.

As he had, during his studies, applied himself very much to that of geometry, he began, upon his coming to Rome, to paint landscapes, buildings, and ancient ruins. But, for the first two years of his residence in that city, he had the utmost difficulty to support himself, being abandoned by his parents, who resented his having rejected their advice in the choice of his profession, and the little stock of money which he had provided before he left France, proving scarce sufficient for the expenses of his journey to Italy. Being destitute, therefore, of friends and acquaintance at Rome, he was reduced to such distress, that his chief subsistence for the greatest part of that time was bread and a small quantity of cheese. But he diverted the sense of uneasy circumstances by an intense and indefatigable application to painting, till the arrival of the celebrated Peter Mignard, who had been the companion of his studies under Voüet, set him more at ease. They immediately engaged in the strictest friendship, living together in the same house, and being commonly known at Rome by the name of the INSEPARABLES, they were employed by the Cardinal of Lyons in copying all the best pieces in the Farnese palace. But their principal study was the works of Raffaelle and other great masters, and the

antiques; and they were constant in their attendance every evening at the academy, in designing after models. Mignard had superior talents in practice; but Du Fresnoy was a greater master of the rules, history, and theory of his profession. They communicated to each other their remarks and sentiments; Du Fresnoy furnishing his friend with noble and excellent ideas, and the latter instructing the former to paint with greater expedition and ease.

Poetry shared with Painting the time and thoughts of Du Fresnoy, who, as he penetrated into the secrets of the latter art, wrote down his observations; and having at last acquired a full knowledge of the subject, formed a design of writing a Poem upon it, which he did not finish till many years afterwards, when he had consulted the best writers, and examined with the utmost care the most admired pictures in Italy.

While he resided there he painted several pictures, particularly the Ruins of the Campo Vaccino, with the City of Rome in the figure of a woman; a young woman of Athens going to see the monument of a lover; Æneas carrying his father to his tomb; Mars finding Lavinia sleeping on the banks of the Tyber descending from his chariot, and lifting up the veil which covered her, which is one of his best pieces; the birth of Venus, and that of Cupid. He had a peculiar esteem for the works of Titian, several of which he copied, imitating that excellent Painter in his colouring, as he did Carracci in his design.

About the year 1653 he went with Mignard to Venice*,

* This is the account of Mons. Felibien, Entretiens sur les Vies et sur les Ouvrages de plus excellens Peintres, tom. xi. edit. Lond. 1705, p. 333. But the late author of Abrégé de la Vie de plus fameux Peintres, part xi. p. 284. edit. Par. 1745, in 4to. says, that Fresnoy went to Venice without Mignard; and that the latter, being importuned by the letters of the former, made a visit to him in that city.