The third mentioned some heads of Livia and Agrippina, without that pretended profile of yours. Here he thinks you had the most lucky occasion to talk of that kind of nose by the ancients called _Quadrata_, as an ingredient of beauty. But you no doubt know, that the noses of some of the most famous Greek statues, viz. the Medicean Venus, and the Picchinian Meleager, are much too thick for becoming the model of beauty, in that kind, to our artists. I shall not, however, gall you with all the doubts and objections raised against your treatise, and repeated to nauseousness, upon the arrival of an Academician, the Margites of our days, who, being shewed your treatise, gave it a slight glance, then laid it aside, offended as it were at first sight. But it was easy to perceive that he wanted his opinion to be asked, which we accordingly all did. “The author, said he very peremptorily, seems not to have been at much pains with this treatise: I cannot find above four or five quotations, and those negligently inserted; no chapter, no page, cited; he certainly collected his remarks from books which he is ashamed to produce.” Yet cannot I help introducing another gentleman, sharp-sighted enough to pick out something that had escaped all my attention; viz. that the Greeks were the first inventors of Painting and Sculpture; an assertion, as he was pleased to express himself, entirely false, having been told it was the Egyptians, or some people still more ancient, and unknown to him. Even the most whimsical humour may be turned to profit: nevertheless, I think it manifest that you intended to talk only of good Taste in those arts; and the first Elements of an art have the same proportion to good Taste in it, as the seed has to the fruit. That the art was still in its infancy among the Egyptians, when it had attained the highest degree of perfection among the Greeks, may be seen by examining one single gem: you need only consider the head of _Ptolomæus Philopator_ by Aulus, and the two figures adjoining to it done by an Egyptian[18], in order to be convinced of the little merit this nation could pretend to in point of art. The form and taste of their Painting have been ascertained by Middleton.[19] The pictures of persons as big as life, on two mummies in the royal cabinet of antiquities at Dresden, are evident instances of their incapacity. But these relicks being curious, in several other respects, I shall hereafter subjoin a short account of them. I cannot, my friend, help allowing some reason for several of these objections. Your negligence in your quotations was, no doubt, somewhat prejudicial to your authenticity: the art of changing blue eyes to black ones, certainly deserved an authority. You imitate Democritus; who being asked, “What is man?” every body knows what was his reply. What reasonable creature will submit to read all Greek scholiasts! _Ibit eo, quo vis, qui Zonam perdidit_— Hor.