Propert. L. II. Eleg. 8. And indeed are not colours so essential, that without them no picture can aspire to universal applause? Do not their bewitching charms cover the most grievous faults? They are the harmonious melody of painting; whatever is offensive vanishes by their splendor, and souls animated with their beauties are absorbed in beholding, as the readers of Homer are by his flowing harmony, so as to find no faults. These, joined to that important science of Chiaro-Oscuro, are the characteristicks of Flemish painting. Agreeably to affect our eye is the first thing in a picture[50], which to obtain, obvious charms are wanted; not such as spring only from reflection. Colouring moreover belongs peculiarly to pictures; whereas design ought to be in every draught, print, &c. and indeed seems easier to be attained than colouring. The best colourists, according to a celebrated writer[51], have always come _after_ the inventors and contourists; we all know the vain attempts of the famous Poussin. In short, all those _Qui rem Romanam Latiumque augescere student,_ Ennius. must here acknowledge the superiority of the Flemish art; the painter being really but nature’s mimick, is the more perfect the better he mimicks her. _Ast heic, quem nunc tu tam turpiter increpuisti,_ Ennius. the delicate _Van der Werf_, whose performances, worth their weight in gold, are the ornaments of royal cabinets only, has made nature inimitable to every Italian pencil; he allures the connoisseur’s eye as well as that of the clown; and, as an English poet says, “that no pleasing poet ever wrote ill,” surely the Flemish painter obtained that applause which was denied to Poussin. I should be glad to see many pictures as happily fancied, as well composed, as enticingly painted as some of _Gherard Lairesse_: let me appeal to every unprepossessed artist at Paris, acquainted with the _Stratonice_, the most eminent, and no doubt the first ranked picture in the cabinet of Mr. de la Boixieres[52]. The subject is of no trivial choice: King Seleucus I.[53] resigned his wife Stratonice, a daughter of Demetrius Poliorcetes, to his son Antiochus, whom a violent passion for his mother-in-law had thrown into a dangerous sickness: after many unsuccessful inquiries, the physician Erasistratus discovered the true cause, and found that the only means of restoring the prince’s health, was, the condescension of the father to the love of his son: the King resigned his Queen, and at the same time declared Antiochus King of the East. Stratonice, the chief person, is the noblest figure, a figure worthy Raphael himself. The charming Queen, _Colle sob idæo vincere digna deas,_ Ovid. Art.