thoughts in the beholders; they would accuse the heavens of injustice, and think of leaving a religion where piety was so ill requited. I say, the greater part would be tempted so to do, I say not that they ought; and the consequence is too dangerous for the practice. In this I have accused myself for my own St Catharine;[117] but let truth prevail. Sophocles has taken the just medium in his “Œdipus.” He is somewhat arrogant at his first entrance, and is too inquisitive through the whole tragedy; yet these imperfections being balanced by great virtues, they hinder not our compassion for his miseries; neither yet can they destroy that horror, which the nature of his crimes has excited in us. Such in painting are the warts and moles, which, adding a likeness to the face, are not therefore to be omitted; but these produce no loathing in us; but how far to proceed, and where to stop, is left to the judgment of the poet and the painter. In comedy there is somewhat more of the worse likeness to be taken, because that is often to produce laughter, which is occasioned by the sight of some deformity; but for this I refer the reader to Aristotle. It is a sharp manner of instruction for the vulgar, who are never well amended, till they are more than sufficiently exposed. That I may return to the beginning of this remark concerning perfect ideas, I have only this to say,—that the parallel is often true in epic poetry. The heroes of the poets are to be drawn according to this rule. There is scarce a frailty to be left in the best of them, any more than is to be found in a divine nature; and if Æneas sometimes weeps, it is not in bemoaning his own miseries, but those which his people undergo. If this be an imperfection, the Son of God, when he was incarnate, shed tears of compassion over Jerusalem; and Lentulus[118] describes him often weeping, but never laughing; so that Virgil is justified even from the holy scriptures. I have but one word more, which for once I will anticipate from the author of this book. Though it must be an idea of perfection, from which both the epic poet and the history-painter draws, yet all perfections are not suitable to all subjects; but every one must be designed according to that perfect beauty which is proper to him. An Apollo must be distinguished from a Jupiter, a Pallas from a Venus; and so, in poetry, an Æneas from any other hero; for piety is his chief perfection. Homer’s Achilles is a kind of exception to this rule; but then he is not a perfect hero, nor so intended by the poet. All his gods had somewhat of human imperfection, for which he has been taxed by Plato, as an imitator of what was bad; but Virgil observed his fault, and mended it. Yet Achilles was perfect in the strength of his body, and the vigour of his mind. Had he been less passionate, or less revengeful, the poet well foresaw that Hector had been killed, and Troy taken, at the first assault; which had destroyed the beautiful contrivance of his Iliads, and