He can tell you the number of knots on Hercules’s club; has reduced Nestor’s goblet to the modern measure: nay, is suspected of meditating solutions to all the questions proposed by Tiberius to the grammarians. A third, for several years past, has neglected every thing but hunting after ancient coins. Many a new discovery we owe to him; especially some concerning the history of the ancient coiners; and, as I am told, he is to rouse the attention of the world by a Prodromus concerning the coiners of Cyzicum. What a number of reproaches might you have escaped, had you submitted your Essay to the judgment of these gentlemen! they were pleased to acquaint me with their objections, and I should be sorry, for your honour, to see them published. Among other objections, the first is surprized at your passing by the two Angels, in your description of the Raphael in the royal cabinet at Dresden; having been told, that a Bolognese painter, in mentioning this piece, which he saw at St. Sixtus’s at Piacenza, breaks into these terms of admiration: O! what Angels of Paradise[14]! by which he supposes those Angels to be the most beautiful figures of the picture. The same person would reproach you for having described that picture in the manner of Raguenet[15]. The second concludes the beard of Laocoon to be as worthy of your attention as his contracted belly: for every admirer of Greek works, says he, must pay the same respect to the beard of Laocoon, which father Labat paid to that of the Moses of Michael Angelo. This learned Dominican, _Qui mores hominum multorum vidit & urbes_, has, after so many centuries, drawn from this very statue an evident proof of the true fashion in which Moses wore his own individual beard, and whose imitation must, of course, be the distinguishing mark of every true Jew[16]. There is not the least spark of learning, says he, in your remarks on the Peplon of the three vestals: he might perhaps, on the very inflection of the veil, have discovered to you as many curiosities as Cuper himself found on the edge of the veil of Tragedy in the Apotheosis of Homer[17]. We also want proof of the vestals being really Greek performances: our reason fails us too often in the most obvious things. If unhappily the marble of these figures should be proved to be no Lychnites, they are lost, and your treatise too: had you but slightly told us their marble was large-grained, that would have been a sufficient proof of their authenticity; for it would be somewhat difficult to determine the bigness of the grains with such exactness as to distinguish the Greek marble from the Roman of Luna. But the worst is, they are even denied the title of vestals.