332 Rubens and Shakespeare compared. Dec: 26) 
painting of the holy family, in which he has presented’ 
seven figures done from his own family.—-This painting 
is in the church of St James.——He has, by force of genius, 
infused into the various and beautiful features: of those fi- 
gures, and particularly into the grace, the purity, the 
smiling beauty, and innocence’of the child, such a bright- 
nefs and perfection, as to excite in our minds an idea of 
divine nature, blended with the human.—In his picture 
of St Theresa, in the church of Chausen, making inter- 
cefsion to an apparition of gur Saviour, he represents the 
souls in purgatory by hutaan faces, in which the sensation 
of affliction and dismay are-mixed with devotion and hope. 
——The genuine charscters of human nature are exprefsed, 
varied, and heightened, by the talents of the painter, so 
as, ina strange manner, to convey into our minds ari 
idea of a future mysterious state of penitence, trial, and 
purgation.—-In the same way, he preserves the characters 
of human nature in all his paintings of supernatural ob- 
jects; when, as Shakespeare exprefses it, bis zmagination 
bodies forth the forms of things unknown.—It is thus also 
that Shakespeare sets before us, in his wonderful poetical 
paintings, the forms of supernatural objects.—His descrip- 
tions of witches and fairies, have a strange resemblance to 
human character and vulgar opiniun.—I cannot forbear 
to set down some pictures, even of the heathen gods, which 
seem to us natural, by a resemblance to objects of our 
knowledge.—-Thus Hamlet, in the fine description of his. 
father,—— 
An eye like Mars! the front of Jove himself! 
: A station like the herald Mercury, 
New lighted on a heaven kifsing bill. 
In Romeo’s gallant fancy,to describe his beautiful mis- 
