Among the many passages in which Diderot touches on the differences between poetry and painting, none is more just and true than that in which he implores the poet not to attempt description of details: "True taste fastens on one or two characteristics, and leaves the rest to imagination. 'Tis when Armida advances with noble mien in the midst of the ranks of the army of Godfrey, and when the generals begin to look at one another with jealous eyes, that Armida is beautiful to us. It is when Helen passes before the old men of Troy, and they all cry out--it is then that Helen is beautiful. And it is when Ariosto describes Alcina from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet, that notwithstanding the grace, the facility, the soft elegance of his verse, Alcina is not beautiful. He shows me everything; he leaves me nothing to do; he makes me wearied and impatient. If a figure walks, describe to me its carriage and its lightness; I will undertake the rest. If it is stooping, speak to me only of arms and shoulders; I will take all else on myself. If you do more, you confuse the kinds of work; you cease to be a poet, and become a painter or sculptor. One single trait, a great trait; leave the rest to my imagination. That is true taste, great taste."[64] And then he quotes with admiration Ovid's line of the goddess of the seas: Nec brachia longo Margine terrarum porrexerat Amphitrite. [64] _Oeuv._, xi. 328. Quel image! Quels bras! Quel prodigieux mouvement! Quelle figure! and so forth, after Diderot's manner. Nobody will compare these detached and fragmentary deliverances with the full and easy mastery which Lessing, in _Laocoeon_ and its unfinished supplements, exhibits over the many ramifications of his central idea. We can only notice that Diderot had a foot on the track along which Lessing afterwards made such signal progress. The reader who cares to measure the advantage of Lessing's more serious and concentrated attention to his subject, may compare the twelfth chapter of _Laocoeon_ with Diderot's criticism on Doyen's painting of the Battle between Diomede and Aeneas.[65] As we see how near Diderot came to the real and decisive truths of all these matters, and yet how far he remains from the full perception of what a little consecutive study must have revealed to his superior genius, we can only think painfully of his avowal--"I have not the consciousness of having employed the half of my strength: _jusqu'a present je n'ai que baguenaude_." [65] _Salon de 1761_; _Oeuv._, v. 140.