thesis which had been current even before the time of Plutarch and Pliny; namely, that Poetry was a speaking Picture, and Painting a dumb Poem. I will here cite at length the passage in Plutarch which refers to this adage and also contains the motto which Lessing adopted, though he did not quite understand it, for his Laocoon :

Τοῦτο τὸ ἔργον Εὐφράνωρ ἔγραψε, καὶ πάρεστιν ὁρᾷν ἐν εἰκόνι τῆς μάχης τὸ σύγγραμμα καὶ τὴν ἀντέρεισιν ἀλκῆς καὶ θυμοῦ καὶ πνεύματος γέμουσαν. ἀλλ ̓ οὐκ ἂν οἶμαι τὴν ζωγράφου κρίσιν προσθείητε πρὸς τὸν στρατηγὸν, οὐδ ̓ ἀνάσχοισθε τῶν προτιμώντων τὸν πίνακα τοῦ τροπαίου, καὶ τὸ μίμημα τῆς ἀληθείας. πλὴν ὁ Σιμωνίδης, τὴν μὲν ζωγραφίαν, ποίησιν σιωπῶσαν προσαγορεύων, τὴν δὲ ποίησιν, ζωγραφίαν λαλοῦσαν. ὃς γὰρ οἱ ζωγράφοι πράξεις ὡς γινομένας δεικνύουσι, ταύτας οἱ λόγοι γεγενημένας διηγοῦνται καὶ συγγράφουσιν· εἰ δὲ οἱ μὲν χρώμασι καὶ σχήμασιν, οἱ δ ̓ ὀνόμασι καὶ λέξεσι ταῦτα δηλοῦσιν, ὕλῃ καὶ τρόποις μιμήσεως διαφέρουσι τέλος δ ̓ ἀμφοτέροις ἐν ὑπόκειται, καὶ τῶν ἱστορικῶν κράτιστος ὁ τὴν διήγησιν ὥσπερ γραφὴν πάθεσι καὶ προσώποις εἰδωλοποιήσας.

The dictum of Simonides, whether correct or incorrect, was

r Plutarch, Comm. Bellone an Pace clariores fuerint Athenienses, v. 7, p. 366, ed. Reiske: This action Euphranor painted, and you can see in similitude the story of the battle, and the contest teeming with might, courage, and spirit; but you would not, I think, make comparison of the painter and the general, nor endure those who would honour the picture above the trophy, and the imitation above the reality. Yet Simonides addressed painting as SILENT poetry, and poetry as SPEAKING painting. For those actions which painters pourtray as taking place, are, when they have taken place, recounted and described by words. But if the one set present these actions by colours and figures, and the other by names and phrases, they differ in the material and in the modes of their imitation. Both, however, have one object, and the best historian is he who, in the passions and persons of his story, has produced a series of images as if they were painted in a picture.' Ὕλῃ καὶ τρόποις μιμήσεως διαφέρουσι. They differ in the material and in the modes of their expression.' This is the passage which I mentioned as having been chosen by Lessing for the motto of his work, and though, as will have been seen, he slightly misconstrued it, a better could not have been chosen.

intended to be construed and applied with the recollection that the variety of the means employed by the poet and the painter was a matter of common everyday knowledge. The author of the dictum, moreover, knew that it would receive modification in practice from the right feeling of the artist. It has been said to be the privilege of the ancients in nothing to do too much or too little s'

5. The fable of Laocoon has been variously related by writers before and after the time of Virgil. As to the last, according to the version of Quintus Calabert, when Laocoon struck the wooden horse with his spear an earthquake was caused by Minerva which stupefied him with terror. Nevertheless, when the horse was moved into the city he was urgent that it should be burnt and then Minerva invoked two serpents from the island of Calydna, which devoured the children of Laocoon in vain stretching forth their hands to him for succour. Then the serpents rush to the temple of Minerva and disappear beneath the earth, and Laocoon is smitten with blindness. Hyginus, the next writer on the subject after Virgil, speaks of the children being slain with their father, and makes Laocoon the priest of Neptune and not of Apollo.

As to the authors before the time of Virgil who wrote about Laocoon, they were Lysimachus, Lycophron, and a once very celebrated poet, Euphorion, of whom we know from Quintilianu that Virgil had a very high opinion. These were writers of the Alexandrian School, to whom those of the Augustan School, and especially Virgil, seem to have been much indebted x. Laocoon was also probably the theme of more than one Greek writer. It was the subject, we know, of a lost tragedy of Sophocles Y.

The so-called Cyclic Poets were, according to Heynez, (to

s Gurauer, II. 13.
* Cicero, Tusc. Q. iii. 19.

t xii. 388-409.

u x. I. 36.

Dionys. Halicar. i. 48. z Excurs. v. vi, ad lib. ii. Virgil.

whom I am chiefly indebted for these observations), the real fountain of these different versions, and above all Leschis, 'quem utique Quintus expressisse visus est.'

Cardinal Sadolet's comparatively modern poem on the Laocoon is, as will be seen, given at length by Lessing, who highly esteemed it, in a note to one of the sections of this work a.

Lessing made use of the fable of Laocoon as furnishing the occasion for expressing certain principles of criticism discriminating between the arts of Poetry and Painting. He did not intend as he more than once, I think, says-to write a philosophical treatise, modo et formá, on art. One of his biographers has observed that the pursuit of Truth was more agreeable to him than the capture of the object of his pursuit. He delighted in the chase itself and the opportunities which it afforded for the exercise of his vigorous sense, great erudition, and masculine understanding.

6. I have written in the Appendix to each Chapter a few concise historical notes, illustrative of the authors mentioned by Lessing, and have added a few additional references. To many readers the information thus supplied will probably be unnecessary, but there are some, to whom I hope it will not be disagreeable, and to both classes it may be perhaps convenient.

There are, however, two or three authors whom Lessing, for purposes of explanation or censure, very frequently mentions: and there are others whom one is surprised that he does not mention. I will say a word on both these topics.

As to the former, the first author in date is Dryden.

- With Dryden's Parallel of Poetry and Painting'an essay prefixed in 1695 to Du Fresnoy's Latin poem 'De Arte Graphica'-Lessing seems to have been well acquainted. The essay, though it bears marks of his unrivalled style, has not contributed much to the fame of Dryden. It was truly observed,

a P. 78 of this work.

that wanting a competent knowledge of painting, he suffered himself to be misled by an unskilful guide.' As to the general subject, Dryden relied greatly on the authority of Bellori, to whom Lessing also refers b. Dryden says in one place, that the principal end of Painting is to please, of Poetry to instruct;' and in another placed, that one main end of Poetry and Painting is to please.'. . . . 'The imitation of Nature is, therefore, justly constituted as the general, indeed the only, rule of pleasing both in Poetry and Painting .' Then he refers to Aristotle's opinion, which is considered fully hereafter in the notes to the Laocoon.

The poem of Du Fresnoy was translated into English verse by Mason in 1782, and was published, with valuable notes, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and is to be found in the last edition of his Works.

Du Fresnoy begins with a fragment from Horace's Ars Poetica, Ut Pictura Poesis erit f' Mason cites in a note the adage of Simonides from Plutarch, and says, 'There is a Latin line somewhere to the same purpose, but I know not whether ancient or modern-" Poesis est Pictura loquens, mutum Pictura Poema."

Francis Junius was born at Heidelberg in or about 1589. A man of vast classical erudition, and a great traveller, a friend of Grotius, Salmasius, Vossius (his brother-in-law), and Archbishop Usher.

In 1620 he came to England, and was received into the household of the Earl of Arundel and Surrey. Here he wrote his folio volume, De Pictura Veterum,' on the Art of Painting among the ancients, which was first published in Holland. He died at Windsor in 1678, and in his eighty-eighth or eightyninth year. He was buried at Windsor; and the University of Oxford, to whom he bequeathed his manuscript and books out See p. 26, note g.

b Works, iv. 311, ed. Malone.
d Ib. 318.

f v. 361.

e Ib. 322.

of gratitude, caused a Latin inscription to be placed over his tomb. In it he is described as pene nonagenarius, and as one 'qui per omnem aetatem sine querela aut injuria cujusquam musis tantum et sibi vacavit.' The edition which I have used was published at Rotterdam 1694. Lessing blames Spence for relying on the accuracy of Junius's citations without verification. They were often very incorrect 8.

Joseph Spenceh was for ten years Professor of Poetry at Oxford. He spent five years on the Continent, chiefly at Florence and Rome. He published Dialogues in ten books, in royal folio, in 1747. His work was entitled, Polymetis; or, an Inquiry concerning the Agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets and the Remains of the Ancient Artists, being an attempt to illustrate them mutually from one another i.'

When you look on the old pictures' (Spence says, p. 3) 'or sculptures, you look on the works of men who thought much in the same train with the old poets. There was generally the greatest union in their designs; and when they are engaged on the same subject they must be the best explainers of one another. As we lie so far north from this last great seat of Empire, we are placed out of the reach of consulting these finer remains of antiquity so much and so frequently as one could wish. The only way of supplying this defect to any degree among us is by copies, prints, and drawings.'

(P. 285): 'I think, therefore, there can be no room to doubt that some of the best comments we could have on the ancient poets, might be drawn from the works of the artists who were their contemporaries; and whose remains often present to our eyes the very things which the others have delivered down to us only in words.'

This author is continually referred to in the Laocoon. He See pp. 280-1 of this work. h Note, p. 87.

It contains forty-one plates, seventeen ornamental pieces at the close of the Dialogues,' three figures (disposed in the manner of an ancient relievo) in the frontispiece-the Goddess of Painting, the God of Poetry, and the Genius of Sculpture, from antiques.