designs of his pen. And so Bellori informs us of a very curious volume in
manuscript, composed by RUBENS, which contained, among other topics
concerning art, descriptions of the passions and actions of men, drawn
from the poets, and demonstrated to the eye by the painters. Here were
battles, shipwrecks, sports, groups, and other incidents, which were
transcribed from Virgil and other poets, and by their side RUBENS had
copied what he had met with on those subjects from Raphael and the
antique.[A]

The poet and the painter are only truly great by the mutual influences of
their studies, and the jealousy of glory has only produced an idle
contest. This old family-quarrel for precedence was renewed by our
estimable President, in his brilliant "Rhymes on Art;" where he maintains
that "the narrative of an action is not comparable to the action itself
before the eyes;" while the enthusiast BARRY considers painting "as poetry
realised."[B] This error of genius, perhaps first caught from Richardson's
bewildering pages, was strengthened by the extravagant principle adopted
by Darwin, who, to exalt his solitary talent of descriptive poetry,
asserted that "the essence of poetry was picture." The philosophical
critic will find no difficulty in assigning to each, sister-art her
distinct province; and it is only a pleasing delirium, in the enthusiasm
of artists, which has confused the boundaries of these arts. The dread
pathetic story of Dante's "Ugolino," under the plastic hand of Michael
Angelo, formed the subject of a basso-relievo; and Reynolds, with his
highest effort, embodied the terrific conception of the poet as much as
his art permitted: but assuredly both these great artists would never have
claimed the precedence of the Dantesc genius, and might have hesitated at
the rivalry.

[Footnote A: Rubens was an ardent collector of works of antique art; and