All this makes me doubt of finding among the ancients any companion for Jacob Jordans, though he is so zealously defended in your letter. Nor am I afraid of maintaining what I have said concerning him. Mr. d’Argenville is indeed a very industrious collector of criticisms upon the artists; but as his design is not very extensive, so his decisions are often too general, to afford us characteristical ideas of his heroes. A good eye must be allowed to be a better judge, in matters of this kind, than all the ambiguous decisions of authors: and to fix the character of Jordans, I might content myself with appealing to his Diogenes, and the Purification, in the royal cabinet at Dresden. But, for the reader’s sake, let me inquire into the meaning of what you call _Truth_ in painting. For if truth, in the general sense, can by no means be excluded from any branch of the arts, we have, in the decision of Mr. d’Argenville, a riddle to unfold, which, if it has any meaning at all, must have the following: Rubens, enabled by the inexhaustible fertility of his genius, to pour forth fictions like Homer himself, displays his riches even to prodigality: like him he loved the marvellous, as well in thought and grandeur of conception, as in composition, and chiar’-oscuro. His figures are composed in a manner unknown before him, and his lights, jointly darting upon one great mass, diffuse over all his works a bold harmony, and amazing spirit. Jordans, a genius of a lower class, cannot, in the ideal part of painting, by any means be compared with his great master. He had no wings to soar above nature; for which reason he humbly followed, and painted her as he found her: and if this be _truth_, he, no doubt, had a larger share of it than Rubens. If the modern artists, with regard to forms and beauty, are not to be directed by antiquity, there is no authority left to influence them. Some, in painting Venus, would give her a Frenchified air[178]; another would present her with an Aquiline nose, the Medicean Venus, as they would say, having such a one[179]: her hands would be provided with spindles instead of fingers; and she would ogle us with Chinese eyes, like the beauties of a new Italian school. Every artist, in short, would, by his performance, betray his country: but, as Democritus says[180], if the artists ought to pray the gods to let them meet with none but auspicious images, those of the ancients will best suit their wishes.