How warm, nay, how glowing a colouring is this! In the beginning of his verse, the word _æs_, or brass, was taken for a trumpet, because the instrument was made of that metal,—which of itself was fine; but in the latter end, which was made extempore, you see three metaphors, _martemque_,—_accendere_,—_cantu_. Good heavens! how the plain sense is raised by the beauty of the words! But this was happiness, the former might be only judgment: this was the _curiosa felicitas_, which Petronius attributes to Horace; it is the pencil thrown luckily full upon the horse’s mouth, to express the foam which the painter with all his skill could not perform without it. These hits of words a true poet often finds, as I may say, without seeking; but he knows their value when he finds them, and is infinitely pleased. A bad poet may sometimes light on them, but he discerns not a diamond from a Bristol-stone; and would have been of the cock’s mind in Æsop,—a grain of barley would have pleased him better than the jewel. The lights and shadows which belong to colouring, put me in mind of that verse in Horace, _Hoc amat obscurum, vult hoc sub luce videri._ Some parts of a poem require to be amply written, and with all the force and elegance of words; others must be cast into shadows, that is, passed over in silence, or but faintly touched. This belongs wholly to the judgment of the poet and the painter. The most beautiful parts of the picture, and the poem, must be the most finished, the colours and words most chosen; many things in both, which are not deserving of this care, must be shifted off; content with vulgar expressions, and those very short, and left, as in a shadow, to the imagination of the reader. We have the proverb, _manum de tabulâ_, from the painters; which signifies, to know when to give over, and to lay by the pencil. Both Homer and Virgil practised this precept wonderfully well, but Virgil the better of the two. Homer knew, that when Hector was slain, Troy was as good as already taken; therefore he concludes his action there: for what follows in the funerals of Patroclus, and the redemption of Hector’s body, is not, properly speaking, a part of the main action. But Virgil concludes with the death of Turnus; for after that difficulty was removed, Æneas might marry, and establish the Trojans, when he pleased. This rule I had before my eyes in the conclusion of the “Spanish Friar,” when the discovery was made that the king was living, which was the knot of the play untied; the rest is shut up in the compass of some few lines, because nothing then hindered the happiness of Torrismond and Leonora. The faults of that drama are in the kind of it, which is tragi-comedy. But it was given to the people: and I never writ any thing for myself but “Antony and Cleopatra.”