Thus, as convoy-ships either accompany or should accompany their merchants,[116] till they may prosecute the rest of their voyage without danger; so Philostratus has brought me thus far on my way, and I can now sail on without him. He has begun to speak of the great relation betwixt painting and poetry, and thither the greatest part of this discourse, by my promise, was directed. I have not engaged myself to any perfect method, neither am I loaded with a full cargo; it is sufficient if I bring a sample of some goods in this voyage. It will be easy for others to add more, when the commerce is settled; for a treatise twice as large as this of painting, could not contain all that might be said on the parallel of these two sister arts. I will take my rise from Bellori, before I proceed to the author of this book. The business of his preface is to prove, that a learned painter should form to himself an idea of perfect nature. This image he is to set before his mind in all his undertakings, and to draw from thence, as from a storehouse, the beauties which are to enter into his work; thereby correcting nature from what actually she is in individuals, to what she ought to be, and what she was created. Now, as this idea of perfection is of little use in portraits, or the resemblances of particular persons, so neither is it in the characters of comedy and tragedy, which are never to be made perfect, but always to be drawn with some specks of frailty and deficience; such as they have been described to us in history, if they were real characters, or such as the poet began to shew them at their first appearance, if they were only fictitious or imaginary. The perfection of such stage-characters consists chiefly in their likeness to the deficient faulty nature, which is their original; only, as it is observed more at large hereafter, in such cases there will always be found a better likeness and a worse, and the better is constantly to be chosen; I mean in tragedy, which represents the figures of the highest form amongst mankind. Thus in portraits, the painter will not take that side of the face, which has some notorious blemish in it; but either draw it in profile, (as Apelles did Antigonus, who had lost one of his eyes,) or else shadow the more imperfect side; for an ingenious flattery is to be allowed to the professors of both arts, so long as the likeness is not destroyed. It is true, that all manner of imperfections must not be taken away from the characters; and the reason is, that there may be left some grounds of pity for their misfortunes. We can never be grieved for their miseries, who are thoroughly wicked, and have thereby justly called their calamities on themselves. Such men are the natural objects of our hatred, not of our commiseration. If, on the other side, their characters were wholly perfect, (such as, for example, the character of a saint or martyr in a play,) his or her misfortunes would produce impious