till nature in some distant age, for in the present, enervated with
luxury, she seems incapable of such an effort, shall produce some
transcendent genius, of power to eclipse the Iliad and the Edipus.

The superiority of the ancient artists in Painting, is not perhaps so
clearly manifest. They were ignorant, it will be said, of light, of
shade, and perspective; and they had not the use of oil colours, which
are happily calculated to blend and unite without harshness and
discordance, to give a boldness and relief to the figures, and to form
those middle Teints which render every well-wrought piece a closer
resemblance of nature. Judges of the truest taste do, however, place
the merit of colouring far below that of justness of design, and force
of expression. In these two highest and most important excellencies,
the ancient painters were eminently skilled, if we trust the
testimonies of Pliny, Quintilian, and Lucian; and to credit them we
are obliged, if we would form to ourselves any idea of these artists
at all; for there is not one Grecian picture remaining; and the
Romans, some few of whose works have descended to this age, could
never boast of a Parrhasius or Apelles, a Zeuxis, Timanthes, or
Protogenes, of whose performances the two accomplished critics above
mentioned, speaks in terms of rapture and admiration. The statues that
have escaped the ravages of time, as the Hercules and Laocoon for
instance, are still a stronger demonstration of the power
of the Grecian artists in expressing the passions; for what was
executed in marble, we have presumptive evidence to think, might also
have been executed in colours. Carlo Marat, the last valuable painter
of Italy, after copying the head of the Venus in the Medicean
collection three hundred times, generously confessed, that he could
not arrive at half the grace and perfection of his model. But to speak
my opinion freely on a very disputable point, I must own, that if the