To avoid absurdities and incongruities, is the same law established for both arts. The painter is not to paint a cloud at the bottom of a picture, but in the uppermost parts; nor the poet to place what is proper to the end or middle, in the beginning of a poem. I might enlarge on this; but there are few poets or painters, who can be supposed to sin so grossly against the laws of nature and of art. I remember only one play, and for once I will call it by its name, “The Slighted Maid,”[135] where there is nothing in the first act, but what might have been said or done in the fifth; nor any thing in the midst, which might not have been placed as well in the beginning, or the end. To express the passions which are seated in the heart, by outward signs, is one great precept of the painters, and very difficult to perform. In poetry, the same passions and motions of the mind are to be expressed; and in this consists the principal difficulty, as well as the excellency of that art. This, says my author, is the gift of Jupiter; and, to speak in the same heathen language, we call it the gift of our Apollo,—not to be obtained by pains or study, if we are not born to it; for the motions which are studied, are never so natural as those which break out in the height of a real passion. Mr Otway possessed this part as thoroughly as any of the ancients or moderns. I will not defend every thing in his “Venice Preserved;” but I must bear this testimony to his memory,—that the passions are truly touched in it,[136] though perhaps there is somewhat to be desired, both in the grounds of them, and in the height and elegance of expression; but nature is there, which is the greatest beauty.