peats, in brief but energetic terms, his vifionary crime *. As I am inclined to believe that the artists of England may be less acquainted with thefe feelings of nera gelofia (to use the words of the Italian whom I have quoted) than the more impaffioned natives of France and Italy, I hope they will approve my endeavour to vindicate from the horrible imputation of an envious murder their ancient brother of Athens. At all events I have a pleasure in perfuading myself that he was as clearly innocent as he was confeffedly ingenious. When he removed from Attica, whatever the cause of that removal might be, he is faid to have obtained the friendship of Minos, the fecond of that name, who reigned in Crete; and to have executed, in wood, two ftatues of Phadra and Ariadne, the celebrated daughters of the Cretan monarch. In Crete he is reported to have built a labyrinth of marvellous intricacy, and copied, on a smaller scale, from a portentous edifice of Egypt. He must have studied, therefore, the works of Egyptian art in their own country, before his vifit to Crete. The Cretans were ever remarkable for their grofs deviation from truth; and the narrative of fome sculptural works afcribed to Dædalus, in their ifland, contains the moft filthy and disgusting fable that ever fullied the pages of fiction. The reader acquainted with mythology will immediately perceive that I allude to the fable of Pasiphae, the most cruelly calumniated queen that ever fuffered from the licentiousness of fancy. Some decent interpreters of her story have fuppofed that she was enamoured of a Cretan officer who bore the name of Taurus, and that Dædalus was employed in affifting their illicit attachment: but Lucian, with an admirable mixture of wit and good-nature, imagines the Taurus of Pafi

*«Fra' fuoi allievi fi contraddislinfe un fuo nipote da alcuni detto calo, da altri attalo, il "quale invento tra le altre cofe la fega e'l compaffo; ma Dedalo ne concepi fi nera gelofia, "che l'uccife."-Memorie degli Architetti Antichi e Moderni, temo i. p. 13. Parma, 1781.

phae's affection to have been merely the fign of the zodiac distinguished by that appellation; and Dædalus is very happily metamorphofed, by this fuppofition, from the culpable confident of a dishonourable intrigue, into an innocent master of aftronomy. But however blameless the intercourse might be between the flandered Pafiphae and the ingenious Athenian, Dædalus appears to have incurred the refentment of the Cretan monarch, and to have been under the neceffity of escaping from his dominion with secret rapidity. Hence arose the fable of his inventing wings for himself and his fon Icarus; a fable fo captivating to the fancy of the Latin poets, that Ovid has related it twice at confiderable length*. Virgil has embellished it in a few verses of fingular delicacy and pathos. Horace, Silius Italicus, and Aufonius have all mentioned it occafionally. The ancient and fenfible interpreter of incredible fictions, Palæphatus, has turned the fabulous wings of Dædalus and his fon into fails. He afferts, that being imprifoned by Minos, they escaped from a window of their prison, and embarked in a skiff: but being pursued by the veffels of Minos, in tempeftuous weather, the father only got fafe to land and completed his escape. Apollodorus relates that Hercules found the body of Icarus cast ashore upon an island, to which he gave the name of Icaria, in honour of the youth, whom he buried. The same author adds, that Dædalus rewarded his illuftrious friend for this humanity fhewn to his unfortunate child, by executing a statue of Hercules, which that hero mistaking in the night, for a living figure, is faid to have struck with a stone. Paufanias mentions this ftatue as preserved by the Thebans in a temple of Hercules, and gives a similar account of its origin as a tribute of gratitude from the afflicted father, whofe escape from Crete he also afcribes, like Palæphatus, to the ufe of fails. Though Virgil and Silius Italicus represent Dædalus as building the temple of the Cumæan Apollo, immedi

Metamorph. lib. viii. Artis Amatoriæ, lib. ii.

ately after his escape from the tyranny of Minos, the Greek hiftorian of his adventures supposes him to have proceeded from Crete to Sicily, and to have ingratiated himself so fuccessfully with Cocalus, a prince of that country, that when Minos, with a naval force, pursued and demanded the fugitive, his generous protector, instead of betraying his ingenious guest, from whose architectural talents he is faid to have derived great advantage, endeavoured to negotiate with Minos in his favour. The Cretan monarch accepted the invitation of the Sicilian prince, and, according to the accounts of more than one ancient Greek author, the daughters of Cocalus contrived, from their partiality to the Athenian artist, to destroy his formidable enemy; which they are said to have accomplished by the means of a hot bath, in such a manner, that the Cretans who attended their king supposed his death to be natural, and departed in peace with his remains-a tale that has much the appearance of fiction.

Dædalus is reported to have expreffed his gratitude towards his Sicilian protector by executing many ingenious works in his country. Diodorus relates that he built an impregnable palace for his royal friend; that he fortified and adorned the temple of Venus Erycina; and that he conftructed a vapour-bath, in which the fick were pleafantly cured of their infirmities, without fuffering from its heat Concerning the latter days and death of Dædalus antiquity furnishes no anecdotes: but the learned Abbé Gedoyn imagines, with great probability, that from Italy he paffed again into Egypt, and ended his life in that country-an idea that he refts on the authority of the Egyptian priefts, who reported, according to the narrative of Diodorus Siculus, that Dædalus conftructed a moft beautiful veftibule to the

* Τρίτον δε σπηλαιον κατα την Σελιανίκων χώραν κατεσκευασεν, εν ω την ατμίδα το κατ' αυτην πυρος έτως ευς 0χως εξέλαβεν, ως τε δια την μαλακότητα της θερμασίας εξίδρων λεληθότως, και κατα μικρον τους ενδιαίριτας μετα περίψεως θεραπεύειν τα σώματα, μηδεν παρενοχλόμενος υπο της θερμότητος. DIODORUS SICULUS, lib. A curious proof of the antiquity and excellence of vapour-baths!

4.

temple of Vulcan at Memphis, and was held in such veneration by the Ægyptians, that they placed in that temple a ftatue which he had carved in wood of himself, and raised, in one of the adjacent islands, a temple to the artist, in which his memory was religiously worshipped by the natives of that country.

Thus incomplete are the best accounts that ancient and modern authors afford of this extraordinary and interefting perfonage, whose exiftence, like that of Prometheus and Semiramis, has been queftioned by the scrutinizing fpirit of modern refinement. A very ingenious and learned French commentator on Pliny, who feems actuated, like Mr. Bryant, by a paffion for etymological chemistry, would reduce the active Athenian artist into a mere Syrian fymbol. But prefuming on the evidence of feveral works (very credibly imputed to this early fculptor) that he really exifted, and presuming this with the more confidence because one of his works has the happy and immortal distinction of being described by Homer, I fhall proceed to enumerate those memorable productions in Sculpture which antiquity affigned to him, and which the course of this narrative has not yet led me to mention. Of these, the most striking are two ftatues of himself and his fon Icarus ; the one formed of tin, the other of brass, and faid to have been stationed in those islands of the Adriatic gulf that were called Electrides t.

* "Dædale eft un nom Syrien, dont les racines se retrouvent dans les deux mots Hebreux "dai (prepofition qui de même que da, en Grec, augmente le fens du mot qu'elle précede) "et dal, pauvre. Dædale eft donc l'emblême de la pauvreté, du besoin, première fource ne"ceffaire des arts..... On reconnoit manifeftement le genie oriental dans cette fiction morase." -M. POINSINET DE SIVRY, in a note to his splendid and elaborate edition of Pliny, in Latin and French, twelve vols. quarto.

It is remarkable that Pliny does not mention the elder Dædalus as a sculptor, but celebrates him as the inventor of the faw, the hatchet, the level, the gimblet, ifinglas, and glue.

+ Ηλεκτριδες νησοι εν αις εισι δυο ανδριαντες Δαίδαλο και Ικαρε, bibus, edit. 1694, p. 379.

STEPHANUS BYZANTINUS, De Ur

Aristotle, from whom Stephanus of Byzantium borrowed his account of these questionable ftatues, has mentioned Dædalus as a maker of puppets that moved by an infufion of quickfilver; an idea that D'Hancarville has ridiculed with contemptuous pleasantry:

"Sur le temoignage d'un certain Philippe, Ariftote, plus de neuf cents ans après Dedale, affuroit qu'au moyen du vif argent, il fit 66 une statue qui marchoit effectivement. Beaucoup d'auteurs, mal"heureusement très-graves, Dion Chryfoftome entr'autres, copierent 66 cette fable, et fuivant l'usage l'appuyèrent de leur autorité; je les "croirois plus volontiers s'ils euffent écrit que Dedale fit des automates philofophes, capables d'écrire feriusement de tels contes; ils fervi❝roient eux-mêmes de juftification à ma croyance."

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Paufanias records, with particular care, the more authentic works of Dædalus that remained in his time: his ftatue of Hercules, at Thebes ; of Trophonius, among the Lebadenfes in Boeotia: thofe of Britomartis and of Minerva, in Crete; with the dance of Ariadne, mentioned by Homer in the Iliad, and wrought on white marble; among the Delians, a Venus in wood, with her right hand perishing by Time, and raised on a fquare bafis inftead of feet. "I am perfuaded," fays Paufanias, "that Ariadne received this image from Dædalus, and car"ried it with her, when the attended Thefeus. The Delians affirm "that Thefeus himself devoted it to their Apollo, that it might not, "on his return to his own country, awaken in his mind a painful and paffionate recollection of Ariadne. Besides these," concludes Paufanias, "I know not any works of Dædalus remaining; for as to those "which the Argives had confecrated in their temple of Juno, and those " removed to Gela in Sicily from Omphace, they have disappeared by "the influence of Time."

Paufanias, in a former part of his defcription, had mentioned another ftatue of Hercules by the fame artift, executed alfo in wood, and