_Quibus Arte benigna,_ _Et meliore luto, finxit præcordia Titan,_ have here a plain way to become originals. Thus the account _de Piles_ gives, ought to be understood, that _Raphael_, a short time before he was carried off by death, intended to forsake the marbles, in order to addict himself wholly to Nature. True antient taste would most certainly have guided him through every maze of common Nature; and whatever observations, whatever new ideas he might have reaped from that, they would all, by a kind of chymical transmutation, have been changed to his own essence and soul. He, perhaps, might have indulged more variety; enlarged his draperies; improved his colours, his light and shadow: but none of these improvements would have raised his pictures to that high esteem they deserve, for that noble Contour, and that sublimity of thoughts, which he acquired from the ancients. Nothing would more decisively prove the advantages to be got by imitating the ancients, preferably to Nature, than an essay made with two youths of equal talents, by devoting the one to antiquity, the other to Nature: this would draw Nature as he finds her; if Italian, perhaps he might paint like _Caravaggio_; if Flemish, and lucky, like _Jac. Jordans_; if French, like _Stella_: the other would draw her as she directs, and paint like _Raphael_. II. CONTOUR. But even supposing that the imitation of Nature could supply all the artist wants, she never could bestow the precision of Contour, that characteristic distinction of the ancients. The noblest Contour unites or circumscribes every part of the most perfect Nature, and the ideal beauties in the figures of the Greeks; or rather, contains them both. _Euphranor_, famous after the epoch of _Zeuxis_, is said to have first ennobled it. Many of the moderns have attempted to imitate this Contour, but very few with success. The great _Rubens_ is far from having attained either its precision or elegance, especially in the performances which he finished before he went to Italy, and studied the antiques. The line by which Nature divides completeness from superfluity is but a small one, and, insensible as it often is, has been crossed even by the best moderns; while these, in shunning a meagre Contour, became corpulent, those, in shunning that, grew lean. Among them all, only _Michael Angelo_, perhaps, may be said to have attained the antique; but only in strong muscular figures, heroic frames; not in those of tender youth; nor in female bodies, which, under his bold hand, grew Amazons. The Greek artist, on the contrary, adjusted his Contour, in every figure, to the breadth of a single hair, even in the nicest and most tiresome performances, as gems. Consider the Diomedes and Perseus of _Dioscorides_[8], Hercules and Iole by _Teucer_[9], and admire the inimitable Greeks. _Parrhasius_, they say, was master of the correctest Contour.