Another digression!—let me now again resume the character of your Aristarchus. You are bold enough to attack the authority of _Bernini_, and to challenge a man, the bare mention of whose name would do honour to any treatise. It was _Bernini_, you ought to recollect, Sir, who at the same age in which Michael Angelo performed his _Studiolo_[44], viz. in his eighteenth year, produced his Daphne, as a convincing instance of his intimacy with the ancients, at an age in which perhaps the genius of Raphael was yet labouring under darkness and ignorance! _Bernini_ was one of those favourites of nature, who produce at the same time vernal blossoms and autumnal fruits; and I think it by no means probable, that his studying nature in riper years misled either him or his disciples. The smoothness of his flesh was the result of that study, and imparted to the marble the highest possible degree of life and beauty. Indeed ’tis nature which endows art with life, and “vivifies forms,” as Socrates says[45], and Clito the sculptor allows. The great Lysippus, when asked which of his ancestors he had chosen for his master, replied, “None; but nature alone.” It is not to be denied, that the too close imitation of antiquity is very often apt to lead us to a certain barrenness, unknown to those who imitate nature: various herself, nature teaches variety, and no votary of her’s can be charged with a sameness: whereas Guido, Le Brun, and some other votaries of antiquity, repeated the same face in many of their works. A certain ideal beauty was become so familiar to them, as to slide into their figures even against their will. But as for such an imitation of nature, as is quite regardless of antiquity, I am entirely of the author’s opinion; though I should have chosen other artists as instances of following nature in painting. _Jordans_ certainly has not met with the regard due to his merit; let me appeal to an authority universally allowed. “There is, says Mr. d’Argenville, more expression and truth in Jordans, than even in Rubens. “Truth is the basis and origin of perfection and beauty; nothing, of any kind whatever, can be beautiful or perfect, without being truly what it ought to be, without having all it ought to have.”