As in the composition of a picture the painter is to take care that nothing enter into it, which is not proper or convenient to the subject, so likewise is the poet to reject all incidents which are foreign to his poem, and are naturally no parts of it; they are wens, and other excrescences, which belong not to the body, but deform it. No person, no incident, in the piece, or in the play, but must be of use to carry on the main design. All things else are like six fingers to the hand, when nature, which is superfluous in nothing, can do her work with five. A painter must reject all trifling ornaments; so must a poet refuse all tedious and unnecessary descriptions. A robe which is too heavy is less an ornament than a burthen. In poetry Horace calls these things—_versus inopes rerum, nugæque canoræ_; there are also the _lucus et ara Dianæ_, which he mentions in the same “Art of Poetry.” But since there must be ornaments both in painting and poetry, if they are not necessary, they must at least be decent; that is, in their due place, and but moderately used. The painter is not to take so much pains about the drapery, as about the face, where the principal resemblance lies; neither is the poet, who is working up a passion, to makes similes, which will certainly make it languish. My Montezuma dies with a fine one in his mouth;[127] but it is ambitious, and out of season. When there are more figures in a picture than are necessary, or at least ornamental, our author calls them “figures to be let;” because the picture has no use of them. So I have seen in some modern plays above twenty actors, when the action has not required half the number.[128] In the principal figures of a picture, the painter is to employ the sinews of his art; for in them consists the principal beauty of his work. Our author saves me the comparison with tragedy; for he says, that herein he is to imitate the tragic poet, who employs his utmost force in those places, wherein consists the height and beauty of the action.