166 APPENDIX. 



of heaven, fay the Divines, both Chriftians and Heathens. 

 How to improve it, many books can teach us ; how to obtain 

 it, none; that nothing can be done without it, all agree : 



Tu nihil invita dices facieive Minerva. 



Without Invention a Painter is but a Copier, and a Poet but 

 a Plagiary of others. Both are allowed fometimes to copy and 

 tranflate ; but, as our Author tells you, that is not the beft 

 part of their reputation. " Imitators are but a fervile kind of 

 cattle," fays the Poet; or at beft, the keepers of cattle for other 

 men : They have nothing which is properly their own ; that 

 is a fufficient mortification for me, while I am tranflating 

 Virgil. But to copy the beft author is a kind of praife, if I 

 perform it as I ought; as a copy after Raphael is more to be 

 commended than an original of any indifferent Painter. 



Under this head of Invention is placed the Difpofition of 

 the work, to put all things in a beautiful order and harmony, 

 that the whole may be of a piece. " The competitions of the 

 Painter fhould be conformable to the text of antient authors, 

 to the cuftoms, and the times;" and this is exactly the fame in 

 Poetry : Homer and Virgil are to be our guides in the Epic; 

 Sophocles and Euripides in Tragedy : In all things we are to 

 imitate the cuftoms and the times of thofe perfons and things 

 which we reprefent : Not to make new rules of the Drama, 

 as Lopez de Vega has attempted unfuccefsfully to do, but to 

 be content to follow our Mafters, who underftood Nature 

 better than we. But if the ftory which we treat be modern, 

 we are to vary the cuftoms, according to the time and the 

 country where the fcene of action lies; for this is ftill to imi- 

 tate Nature which is always the fame, though in a different 

 drefs. 



As " in the composition of a picture, the Painter is to take 

 care that nothing enter into it, which is not proper or con- 

 venient 



