_P_. The Muses are young ladies, we expect to see them dressed; though not like some modern beauties with so much gauze and feather, that "the Lady herself is the least part of her." There are however didactic pieces of poetry, which are much admired, as the Georgics of Virgil, Mason's English Garden, Hayley's Epistles; nevertheless Science is best delivered in Prose, as its mode of reasoning is from stricter analogies than metaphors or similies. _B_. Do not Personifications and Allegories distinguish poetry? _P_. These are other arts of bringing objects before the eye; or of expressing sentiments in the language of vision; and are indeed better suited to the pen than the pencil. _B_. That is strange, when you have just said they are used to bring their objects before the eye. _P_. In poetry the personification or allegoric figure is generally indistinct, and therefore does not strike us as forcibly as to make us attend to its improbability; but in painting, the figures being all much more distinct, their improbability becomes apparent, and seizes our attention to it. Thus the person of Concealment is very indistinct and therefore does not compel us to attend to its improbability, in the following beautiful lines of Shakespear: "--She never told her love; But let Concealment, like a worm i' th' bud, Feed on her damask cheek."-- But in these lines below the person of Reason obtrudes itself into our company, and becomes disagreeable by its distinctness, and consequent improbability. "To Reason I flew, and intreated her aid, Who paused on my case, and each circumstance weigh'd; Then gravely reply'd in return to my prayer, That Hebe was fairest of all that were fair. That's a truth, reply'd I, I've no need to be taught, I came to you, Reason, to find out a fault. If that's all, says Reason, return as you came, To find fault with Hebe would forfeit my name."