The reader must not forget that our theory, being purely speculative, does not include among the means of the several arts, those which arise from skill in execution, and the gift of genius in the individual artist, which, indeed, may either modify the consequences of principles or soften down the defects resulting from a use of metaphor in itself erroneous. It is not a direct impossibility that the poet should be able to wield the moral allegory of the moderns so as to remedy its insignificancy. Neither can it be a matter of doubt, that the sense and potential effect of which this allegory is susceptible in painting, depends much on the greater or less ideality of character imparted to it by the artist in the execution which is dependent on himself.

I shall, therefore, have been imperfectly comprehended, if, in what I have said concerning the allegorical form of composition as applied by Rubens to his metaphorical history of Marie de Medicis, it has been supposed that, while I approved of it relatively to the general plan of conception, I also approved the taste of design and disposition, the style, character, and details of execution.

In nothing is discrimination on the part of the artist more requisite than in the use of an emblematic language, whose elements are often so variable, so arbitrary, and so liable to ambiguity. This inconvenience is still more perceptible when

(as is sometimes the case with Rubens) the artist is himself the inventor of allegories to which he for the first time attaches a signification not previously sanctioned by custom.

It is the same with symbols, which constitute a distinct branch of allegorical language.

Symbolical composition (which I have so termed because to the use of symbols is its metaphorical virtue more especially due) partakes still more of the nature and spirit of writing. Its personages, in the light in which they are employed, may be said to be, as it were, hieroglyphic characters, purporting to speak to the mind through abbreviated signs of the images of objects.

To sculpture, whether considered at large in statues or the ornaments of architecture, or in its minor department of medals or coins, more especially belongs both the use of symbols, and of symbolical writing. Although it may be, and in fact is, made use of in painting, yet there is one remark to be made respecting the taste and fitness of the use so made of it, that must not be passed

over.

It is this. Symbols in relation to the figures with which they are associated can only be looked upon as emblematic signs; I mean as representing things whose image is purely intellectual. Since, therefore, they must not wear an appearance too closely approaching to real existence, their employment is much more in accordance

with the arts which, owing to the nature of their materials, are debarred the resources of colour, the effect of which is to give objects the semblance of life and reality.

For instance, Nicholas Poussin, in one of his pictures representing Moses saved from the waters, has been pleased to invest with the colours of life, the female head of the Sphinx, a symbol against which, as in the ancient statue, is resting the allegorical figure of the Nile personified. This surely must be considered an error. The Sphinx with the body of a lion and the head of a woman was of old time only one of the emblematical signs of hieroglyphic writing; and this, being to us wholly chimerical, was not deemed real even by the ancient Egyptians. Since its existence was at no time considered as even poetically probable, is it fitting that the pencil should give to a factitious symbol, a most palpable appearance of animated existence? Whatever be the opinion adopted in this respect, it is evithat what in painting is a difficulty, becomes an advantage to sculpture, in as much as were the Sphinx wholly of marble it could not produce the same incoherence of ideas, nor so heterogeneous a mingling of inert matter with living beings.

The motive for employing symbols in sculpture, and the engraving of medals, is sufficient to determine their significative import, and by this should the artist be guided in his manner of using, and

the spectator in the light in which he considers them. As signs of ideas, as conventional complements of the forms of objects, and as a portion or mere abridgment of their images, they are frequently found together in compositions, from no other reason than that for which written characters are combined. Their co-existence is purely intellectual, and their connexion merely conventional.

Hence, the want of correlative proportion, urged as an objection by certain critics against objects so employed. But the least consideration might suffice to convince them that such disproportions belong to the very nature of a form of composition which does not admit the figures of bodies for their own sake; but only for that of the idea they serve to convey. It is clear that no proportional ratio is possible between signs which embrace the forms of all existent things and beings, from that of the gnat to that of the terrestrial globe.

The symbol being a conventional sign, it is not necessary that it should always wear an appearance such as would constitute it the actual imitation of reality, nay, rather it would frequently contradict itself were too close a resemblance aspired to. Associated with allegorical figures, the signification of which it enforces and explains, it also becomes necessary that those figures should be of an abstract or generalized character, that is,

as already defined, the opposite of that particularized imitation, the object of which is to excite a belief in the reality of the individual. Now this applies alike to all figures, whether they are of themselves allegorical or approach the ideal by being associated with allegorical personages. We have already pointed out the importance of this necessary harmony.

It equally holds good with regard to personages, whatever they may be, that are endued with the same metaphorical property by applying to them symbolical attributes. For we know that the symbols which characterize the moral qualities, and the abstract ideas of personages themselves abstract, such as the scales in the hand of justice, the rudder, the club, and the sword, indicative of civil administration, of strength, and of power, are equally applicable, metaphorically, to the representations of celebrated men and living individuals. Thus the thunderbolt was formerly placed in the hand of Pericles to express the wonderful power of his eloquence. Thus too the images of men renowned for their knowledge or their abilities are continually accompanied by well known symbols appertaining to the arts and sciences.

The physical and moral effect that results from thus accompanying real or historical personages with symbolical attributes is evidently to give them a metaphorical signification. I say evidently,