A complete essay or inquiry into the connection between the rules of Art and the eternal and immutable dispositions of our passions would be indeed going at once to the foundation of criticism;[10] but I am too well convinced what extensive knowledge, what subtle and penetrating judgment, would be required to engage in such an undertaking; it is enough for me if, in the language of painters, I have produced a slight sketch of a part of this vast composition, but that sufficiently distinct to show the usefulness of such a theory, and its practicability. Before I conclude, I cannot avoid making one observation on the pictures now before us. I have observed, that every candidate has copied the celebrated invention of Timanthes in hiding the face of Agamemnon in his mantle; indeed, such lavish encomiums have been bestowed on this thought, and that too by men of the highest character in critical knowledge--Cicero, Quintilian, Valerius, Maximus, and Pliny--and have been since re-echoed by almost every modern that has written on the Arts, that your adopting it can neither be wondered at nor blamed. It appears now to be so much connected with the subject, that the spectator would perhaps be disappointed in not finding united in the picture what he always united in his mind, and considered as indispensably belonging to the subject. But it may be observed, that those who praise this circumstance were not painters. They use it as an illustration only of their own art; it served their purpose, and it was certainly not their business to enter into the objections that lie against it in another Art. I fear _we_ have but very scanty means of exciting those powers over the imagination which make so very considerable and refined a part of poetry. It is a doubt with me, whether we should even make the attempt. The chief, if not the only occasion, which the painter has for this artifice, is, when the subject is improper, to be more fully represented, either for the sake of decency, or to avoid what would be disagreeable to be seen; and this is not to raise or increase the passions, which is the reason that is given for this practice, but, on the contrary, to diminish their effect.