their knowledge of an art which began to display itself among them at that early period. D'Hancarville ingeniously interprets the fables concerning the ftones of Deucalion, and the ferpent's teeth of Cadmus, as alluding to the origin of Sculpture.

"Deucalion et Coræbe furent contemporains de Cécrops: Cadmus "vécut avec Hellen, de qui les Grecs prirent le nom d'Hellenes; il "étoit fils de Deucalion. Les fables difoient de ce dernier, que des "hommes naquirent des pierres qu'il jetta par derriere lui, après le "deluge qui arriva de fon tems; ces mêmes fables racontoient que dés "guerriers tout armés naquirent des dents du ferpent tirés par Cad"mus, et femés dans la terre. Comme vers le regne de Cecrops on fit " en pierre les figures du tombeau du Coræbe, ces fables étoient peut" être inventées, pour marquer dans le style dont on se servoit alors, "qu'au tems de Deucalion et de Cadmus, l'ufage de faire avec des "pierres et de l'ivoire des figures qui repréfentoient des hommes s'in"troduifit dans la Gréce."-Antiquités Etrufques, tom. iii. p. 58.

The Egyptians seem to have taken a pride in their early diftinction; for Herodotus fays they boafted of having invented statues; and Diodorus Siculus mentions their idea that men were first created in Ægypt.

NOTE IX. Ver. 148.

The paths of knowledge, truth, and fame are yours.

An allufion to the following paffage from the 14th of Pindar's Olympic Odes, in which that poet has happily expreffed the high ideas he entertained on the influence of the Graces:

Συν γαρ υμιν τα τερπνα, και τα γλυκέα

Γίνεται παντα βροτοις·

Ει σοφος, ει καλος, ει τις αγλαος

Ανηρ.

In the Memoirs of the French Academy there is an animated differtation "Sur les Graces," by that amiable scholar the Abbé Maffieu, who has collected from ancient authors every particular relating to these favourite divinities of Greece.

The following paffage enumerates fome of the moft eminent works of art devoted to their honour:

"Enfin les anciens aimoient à marquer leur zèle pour leurs dieux, par divers monumens qu'ils élévoient à leur gloire, par des tableaux, par des ftatues, par des infcriptions, par des médailles. Or toute la "Gréce étoit pleine de femblables monumens, que la piété publique " avoit confacrés aux Graces. On voyoit dans la plupart des villes "leurs figures, faites par les plus grands maitres. les plus grands maitres. Il y avoit à Pergame "un tableau de ces déeffes peint pour Pythagore de Paros. Un autre

66

" à Smyrne, qui étoit de la main d'Apelle. Socrate avoit fait leurs "ftatues en marble, et Bupale les fit en or. Paufanias parle de plufieurs autres également recommendables par la richeffe de la ma❝tière, et par la beauté du travail. Démosthène rapporte dans la harangue pour la couronne, que les Athéniens les Athéniens ayant fecouru les habitans "de la Querfonèse dans un befoin preffant, ceux-ci pour éternifer le "fouvenir d'un tel bienfait élevèrent un autel avec cette infcription: "Autel confacré à celle des Graces qui préfide á la reconnoiffance."

NOTE X. Ver. 166.

To limit England in the sphere of art.

Every friend to literary merit muft lament that writers of fuch deserved celebrity as Montefquieu and Winkelman, could be induced to disfigure their immortal works with the supposition that the inhabitants of England labour under a natural incapacity of attaining excellence in

the fine arts; a supposition that can only disgrace those who admit and endeavour to fupport it.

NOTE XI. Ver. 270.

And blefs'd a bold progenitor in thee.

Dædalus was univerfally revered by antiquity as the father of Grecian fculpture but in proportion as his genius became an object of public veneration, his personal history was fo involved in the decorations or disguises of fable, that (to the regret of those who love to investigate the lives of meritorious men) it is hardly poffible to obtain a fatisfactory account of this celebrated sculptor, architect, and mechanist, whose early and successful ingenuity has fo juftly endeared his name to every lover of art.

The learned Junius has affigned a very copious article to Dædalus, in his catalogue of antient artists; and the Abbé Gedoyn (the respectable translator of Quintilian and Paufanias) has introduced a hiftory of Dædalus into the Memoirs of the French Academy. These two elaborate writers have collected all that antiquity could furnish to elucidate his life; but they both feem to admit, as an established fact, one most dishonourable circumstance in the history of their hero, which I am inclined to confider as not more entitled to serious credit than the most fabulous portion of his adventures; I mean, the horrid fuppofition that he enviously murdered his nephew and his disciple, for poffeffing ingenuity superior to his own.

Of this I shall speak in its place: let me first relate the more early particulars that ancient writers have recorded concerning this celebrated sculptor. He was by birth an Athenian; and though authors differ on the name of his father, they agree in representing him as the grand

fon or great-grandfon of Erectheus, the fixth fovereign of Athens; and Paufanias afferts that he lived in the period when Edipus reigned in Thebes; that is, about half a century before the fiege of Troy. Diodorus Siculus, who may be called the earlieft biographer of Dædalus that we poffefs, defcribes him as having greatly improved the rude sculpture of his age, and excited the admiration of his contemporaries, before the charge of having deftroyed his difciple reduced him to the neceffity of flying from his country.

In the account that Diodorus has given of this very improbable crime, there is one particular that feems to mark the whole ftory as a fabulous invention. It is faid that this ingenious disciple, the fson of his fifter, was led to invent a faw by the accident of finding the jaw of a serpent, and by observing the use to which its teeth might be fuccefffully applied. It is also said that Dædalus, being surprised and queftioned in the act of burying the murdered youth, answered, that he was configning a ferpent to the earth.

The hiftorian mentions it as a wonder (and it feems one of those fpecious wonders, which the Greeks were so fond of inventing) that the fame animal (the ferpent) fhould prove both the fource of a most useful invention, and the means of detecting an execrable crime. The fupposed criminal is faid to have been condemned by that folemn tribunal the Areopagus but the mode in which the royal sculptor is imagined to have accomplished the deftruction of his difciple is fuch, that it could hardly admit any legal proof of a murderous intention. Ovid has briefly and forcibly ftated the circumftance to which I allude:

:

Dædalus invidit, facraque ex arce Minervæ

Præcipitem mifit, lapfum mentitus.

D D

The poet adds, that the falling youth was metamorphofed into a partridge by the pity of Minerva ; and I confefs that I confider the metamorphofis and the murder as equally fabulous.

Every good mind that reflects on the fubject will efteem it hardly posfible that a man in an elevated rank of life, and bleft himself with a variety of talents, could be induced to murder a promising youth whom he had engaged to inftruct, and the child of his own fifter, for difplaying fuch ingenuity as a mafter and a relation would be naturally dif posed to admire and encourage. A fact of this complexion ought, for the honour of human nature, never to be admitted, except in cafes where the evidence that supports it is irresistible.

For the glory of Dædalus we may affirm, that the improbable atrocity imputed to him is so far from being proved by any testimony, that it rests only on dark tradition; and the whole story has so much the air of a fable, that it ought long ago to have been discountenanced and difcarded by every serious biographer of this illustrious artist. Yet writers are so apt to transcribe the wonderful tales of their predeceffors without examination, or to credit enormities afcribed to men of talents and diftinction, that this barbarous ftory has been credulously repeated from age to age. The modern and enlightened authors who have recently difcuffed the hiftory of Dedalus do not fcruple to paint him as an affaffin. The Abbé Gedoyn endeavours to varnish his own cruel credulity on this fubject by the following remark: "De tout tems une baffe jaloufie a été le vice des artifans, même de ceux qui font profeffion "des arts les plus nobles; j'en pourrois citer plufieurs exemples en "France, comme ailleurs.'

An Italian writer of our own time, (Francesco Milifia,) who has published an entertaining and successful History of Architects, ancient and modern, fpeaks of Dædalus in his architectural character, and re