the reft of his earthen-ware, to have thus produced a buft, or a medallion, (for it might be either,) which was preserved at Corinth as a curious rudiment of art, till that city was deftroyed by Mummius, according to a tradition mentioned by Pliny *. The Athenian philosopher, who lived a confiderable time after the destruction, and after the revival of Corinth, fpeaks of this interefting production of early art as being ftill preserved when he wrote, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius t.

The anecdote of the Corinthian Maid is so pleasing to the imagination, that we cannot be furprized at its being readily received as genuine hiftory. M. de Caylus makes a very just remark upon it, in his excellent Memoir on the Sculpture of the Ancients: "Cette idée eft melée "de vrai-femblance dans le détail, et d'agrément dans l'invention : "mais quand on voudroit douter de ces prétendus faits, il eft encore plus commode de les adopter: on ne pourroit mettre à la place que "d'autres fuppofitions."-Mem. de l'Academie, tom. xxv. p. 305.

NOTE III. Ver. 56.

Till impious worship grew from tender grief.

"For a father, afflicted with untimely mourning, when he hath "made an image of his child foon taken away, now honoured him as

"Fingere ex argilla fimilitudines, Dibutades Sicyonius Figulus primus invenit Corinthi "filiæ operâ; quæ capta amore juvenis, illo abeunte peregre, umbram ex facie ejus ad lu"cernam in pariete lineis circumfcripfit: quibus pater ejus impreffa argilla typum fecit, & "cum cæteris fictilibus induratum igni propofuit; eumque fervatum in Nymphæo donec Co"rinthum Mummius everteret tradunt." PLIN. lib. 35. cap. 12.

+ Απο δε της κόρης η κοροπλατικη ευρέθη ερωτικώς γαρ τινος έχυσα, περιέγραψεν αυτό κοιμωμένες εν τοιχω την σκιαν ειθ' ο πατηρ ησθείς απαραλλάκτω εση τη ομοιότητι (κεραμον δε ειργάζετο) αναγλυψας την περιγραφήν πηλω προσανεπλήρωσεν ο τυπος ετι και νυν εν Κορινθῳ σώζεται. ATHENAGORAS, edit. Oxon. p. 60.

a god which was then a dead man, and delivered to those that were "under him ceremonies and facrifices.

"Thus, in process of time, an ungodly cuftom grown ftrong, was kept as a law, and graven images were worshipped by the commandments of kings." The Wisdom of Solomon, ch. xiv. v. 15. Herodotus has recorded the very fingular honours that were paid to a deceased daughter by the afflicted Mycerinus, an Ægyptian monarch.

From the energy of those inventive paffions, love and grief, we might be induced to suppose that the earliest efforts of rude sculpture would be such as they suggested for the purpose of obtaining a resemblance, however imperfect, of fome mortal infinitely beloved or regretted but history proves that fuperftitious fear is a paffion ftill more creative; and in Greece, which may be confidered as the home, though not the native climate of Sculpture, it is evident that endeavours to represent different divinities by the rudeft fymbols preceded every attempt to express human features by any kind of model. Stocks and ftones were confeffedly worshipped as celeftial powers, in that land of ingenuity, before any thing like a statue, buft, or medallion appeared. The trunk of an old tree was folemnly preserved by the Thefpians, and idolized as their Juno *. But ftones, of a cubic form, were their more general fymbols; and Paufanias mentions a collection of thefe at Pharæ in Achaia, in number about thirty, and each diftinguished by the name of a particular divinity t. They stood near a statue of Mercury, and were probably regarded, in the age of Paufanias, as curious reliques of that ancient mode of worship which, according to his account, had been prevalent among all the Greeks.

Clemens Alexandrinus, who gives a fimilar account of feveral ancient idols, informs us that these rude fymbols were gradually exchanged for statues of the human form, which acquired the appellation βρετη την εκ βροτων επωνυμίαν.

† Ετηκασι δε εγγυτατα το αγαλματος τετραγωνοι λιθοι τριακοντα μάλιςα αριθμόν τέτος σεβεσιν οι Φάρεις έκας θεά τινος ονομα επιλεγοντες· τα δε ετι παλαιότερα και τοις πασιν Έλλησι, τιμας θεων αντι αγαλματων ειχαν αργοί 29. PAUSANIAS, P. 579.

At Orchomenos, the favourite feat of the Graces, so happily celebrated by Pindar, those interesting divinities were originally represented by three white ftones. When a rude fymbol was exchanged, in procefs of time, for a more refined image, the Greeks were folicitous to preserve fome idea of the original type; a practice well illuftrated by D'Hancarville, in his remark on these memorable symbols that first reprefented the Graces. He imagines that the union of the fymbols gave rife to the attitude which these patroneffes of Grecian art affumed in their subsequent form:

"L'union des trois pierres blanches, qui indiquoient les Graces à "Orchomene, fut confervée lorsque la sculpture convertit ces pierres en "ftatues, le point par où elles fe touchoient devint la main par laquelle "chacune d'elles fe repofa fur les bras de l'autre, tandis que de celle "qu'elles avoient libre, elles tinrent les attributs qui les diftinguoient. "Cette attitude charmante continua d'indiquer l'avantage qu'elles fe pretent l'une à l'autre, l'harmonie qui les rend infeparables, et le plaifir qu'elles procurent par leur union. Telles on les voit fur les "médailles, fur beaucoup de pierres gravées, dans un petit groupe qui "appartient à la maison de Borghèse, mais particulierement dans les an"tiquites d'Herculaneum. David, tom. iii. pl. 21."

D'HANCARVILLE, Antiq. Etruf. tom. iv. p. 6.

The firft Minerva adored at Athens is faid to have been nothing more than a rough pointed stake *. In contemplating the great contraft between fuch objects of popular veneration and the works of Phidias and Praxiteles, the mind takes a generous delight in the progreffive powers of human ingenuity. The pleasure we naturally feel in fuch a contrast has induced many writers to investigate, with great labour, the obfcure origin of different arts. M. D'Hancarville, in the ingenious dif

"Sine effigie rudis palus et informe lignum." TERTULLIAN.

BB

fertations prefixed to his Etrufcan Antiquities, has endeavoured to trace the rife and early progress of sculpture through many centuries of darkness prior to the age of Dædalus; a period with which the active enthusiasm of Winkelman had seemed to fatisfy itself, in his elaborate and animated History of Ancient Art.

If the conjectures of a writer may be trufted, who ventures to delineate a period so very distant and dark, the origin of Grecian sculpture may be affigned to the reign of Apis, .the fucceffor of Phoroneus, about 1778 years before the Christian æra *; and according to a very reasonable fuppofition of M. D'Hancarville, this delightful and difficult art was more than a thousand years in proceeding, by infenfible degrees, from a state of rude barbarity to its period of exquifite perfection. Of its most remarkable fteps, and of many memorable artists who particularly contributed to its advancement, I shall speak in subsequent notes. I return to the immediate subject of this,-the difpofition to fond idolatry in an afflicted parent. Two ftriking, though very different characters of the ancient world are remarkable examples of this disposition-Nimrod and Cicero. The ftrong feelings of nature, on the lofs of a beloved child, produced the fame wildness of affectionate fancy in the imperial hunter and in the republican philofopher. Those who recollect the infinite tenderness with which the great Roman orator speaks, in his Letters, of his darling Tullia, will forgive and pity the unhappy father, whofe excefs of affliction led him so far to forget his own philofophical principles as to think very seriously of building, not a tomb, but a temple, to his departed child, as a proper object of worship. The Abbé Mongault has clearly ascertained this intention of Cicero, in his interesting remarks on the Fanum Tulliæ, in the Memoirs of the French Academy.

"Ainfi l'invention de la ftatuaire remonte jufqu'au tems de cet Apis qui finit vers l'an 3932 de la période Julienne, a-peu-près mil sept cent foixante dix huit ans avant la naif"fance de Jefus Chrift." D'HAN CARVILLE, Antiq. Etruf. tom. iii. p. 21.

NOTE IV. Ver. 68.

Thy fam'd Prometheus, thy primeval pride.

Of all the celebrated perfonages of antiquity, there is not one who seems to have had a harder fate, in every point of view, than this extraordinary character. He has peculiar claims to a place in this Work, from having been long regarded as the very first of Pagan artists, and indeed, the first of philofophers *. The poets have represented him as fuffering the feverest of tortures for ingenuity and benevolence. His acute and energetic fpirit, nobly painted by Efchylus, rendered him a favourite hero of the Athenian, and afterwards of the Roman stage, as we may conjecture from the fragments of Accius. At Athens he had an altar infcribed to him in the Academy; and a festival was held in his honour, diftinguished by a race, in which the candidates for the prize carried a flame as they ran, and he only was confidered as the victor who brought it alive to the goal t. Paufanias, who mentions this tribute to the memory of Prometheus, relates alfo that the inhabitants of Phocis preserved, with great veneration, fome reliques of the very clay from which this firft of modellers was faid to have fashioned man ‡. Yet fome of the Pagan philofophers did not scruple to deny the mortal existence of Prometheus, and to reduce him to a mere symbol of man's inventive faculty. Some early Chriftian writers treat him with still

* Πασαι τεχναι βροτοισιν εκ Προμηθέως.» ÆSCHYLUS.

* Εν Ακαδημία δη εςι Προμηθέως βωμος και θεασιν απ' αυτό προς την πόλιν έχοντες καιομένας λαμπάδας" το οι αγωνισμα, ομε τῳ δρομῳ φυλάξαι την δαίδα ετι καιομένην, εςιν. PAUSANIAS, p. 76.

M. de Caylus has inferted in the firft volume of his Antiquities a vignette, formed from a monument found in Athens, alluding to this race.

απαν υπό το Προμηθέως το γενος πλασθήναι TWX