3.78 



to Minerva for excellence in the arts, or to Diana 

 for stature. The ancients were so much in the 

 habit of personifying abstract qualities, that it 

 would be singular indeed, if ii should appear that 

 they had neglected one, which they so highly 

 prized as that of beauty. Force and strength are 

 not merely personified by iEschylus in descrip- 

 tion, but they are two of the dramatis persona?, 

 and act no inconsiderable part in the Prometheus. 

 That beauty was considered as a positive quality, 

 and actually personified, may, I think, be shewn 

 from a passage in one of the poems that go under 

 the name of Anacreon, and which were at least 

 written early enough, to be of sufficient authority 

 in the present case. N 



Ai Mucraa rov 'EpwTa— 



Love, bound by the Muses, and delivered over 

 to Beauty, implies a manifest personification of that 

 quality : and if it should be a single instance, it 

 will, on that account, be rather in favour of 

 what I have advanced ; for, I take it, that the 

 reason why beauty was not in general personified 

 as beauty, is, that it was personified in a more 

 august and splendid manner, under the name 

 and deity of Venus or Aphrodite. 



204. L 7. I have already had occasion, in some in- 

 stances, to differ from Mr. Burke, but in none so 

 strongly (at least in appearance) as in the present ; 

 for he expressly states, that perfection is not the 



