A DREAM OF THE PAINTERS.



- Animum pictura pascit inani.
VIRG., AEn. i. 464.

And with the shadowy picture feeds his mind.

When the weather hinders me from taking my diversions without-doors,
I frequently make a little party, with two or three select friends,
to visit anything curious that may be seen under cover. My
principal entertainments of this nature are pictures, insomuch that
when I have found the weather set in to be very bad, I have taken a
whole day's journey to see a gallery that is furnished by the hands
of great masters. By this means, when the heavens are filled with
clouds, when the earth swims in rain, and all nature wears a
lowering countenance, I withdraw myself from these uncomfortable
scenes, into the visionary worlds of art; where I meet with shining
landscapes, gilded triumphs, beautiful faces, and all those other
objects that fill the mind with gay ideas, and disperse that
gloominess which is apt to hang upon it in those dark disconsolate
seasons.

I was some weeks ago in a course of these diversions, which had
taken such an entire possession of my imagination that they formed
in it a short morning's dream, which I shall communicate to my
reader, rather as the first sketch and outlines of a vision, than as