I must therefore be content to leave the FANCIES as an appendix to the mythological division of the epic class, and proceed to cite examples of the three great branches of legitimate historical pictures. HISTORICAL PICTURES. Here I know that in the very outset I shall shock all the sticklers for the unities; for my very first section must consist of whole histories represented in the same picture; admitting not only a variety of actions belonging to the history, but even a repetition of the persons engaged in it when it is essential, or even when it is convenient for the narrative. The second section contains those histories which are related in a series of compositions, each forming a whole in itself, though belonging to a cycle. And the third section includes those works in which a single point in history makes the picture. First of the first section, I must name the taking of Troy by Polygnotus, painted in fresco on the walls of the Lesche, at Delphi. The description I have already given after Pausanias renders any further account of it unnecessary. The next example I shall cite is of the highest character and of the highest authority. It is the most glorious justification of the breach of the cold rules of critics, and shows that in some cases to abide by the unities would destroy the spirit and sublimity of the work. I speak now of the transgression and chastisement of man in the roof of the Sistine chapel, by Michael Angelo. In that composition there are not only two parts of the same history told in the same picture, but the principal figures themselves are repeated with equal force; and rendered, as to the picture, of equal importance. And in what other way could the crime and its punishment have been so closely, so awfully connected? It is impossible to go into that chapel without feeling that the pictures there are formed to make the rule for art, not to receive it; and that the folly of confining genius by the flimsy laws of ordinary criticism, is only equalled by that of the tyrant of old, who is reported to have paved the bed of the ocean where it rolled beneath his capital with gilded tiles, and to have expected it to reverence the boundaries of his work. But a number of those great men who had laboured in the long neglected field of painting, and had stirred and loosened the soil, and prepared it for the hands of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle, appear to have disregarded the unities whenever the nature of the subject rendered it convenient, and with excellent effect, as I hope to show when I come to give an account of their works. There is one picture of this kind by an ancient Flemish artist of such transcendant merit, that I shall endeavour to describe it as a model for this treatment of historical subjects. The picture is by Hemelink, and is now in the possession of the King of Bavaria[161].