7

my attention has been turned from Donatello, Ghiberti, and their fucceffors, to the dearer juvenile artist who, after the fairest promise of future excellence, under your tender and animating care, has been destined to lose the uncommon advantages he poffeffed, and valued, by a length of fickness and complicated fufferings.

I have now watched, you know, confiderably more than two years over this interefting invalide: I have feen him enduring a horrible feries and variety of increasing tortures; yet in this very long trial of a martyr's conftancy and courage I have never heard a fingle murmur escape from his lips; but have beheld him triumph over the severest unmerited corporeal torments by the ferenity, fortitude, and sweetness of a spirit truly angelic. In a part of this long and diftreffing period I have resumed, at his affectionate request, my fufpended Work, and advanced in it, by fuch troubled industry, as those only can perfectly conceive, who have forced the mind to labour

with motives of fimilar affection, and with fimilar dif

quietude.

your

Under fuch circumstances, you will not blame me for allowing my just admiration of affectionate and magnanimous, though difabled difciple, to alter the intended current of my verse. Writing, as I have ever done, from the heart, I have followed its imperious fuggeftions; and your fympathy, my dear friend, which I am confident I fhall obtain, in this part of my subject, will form, at once, my justification and my reward.

For your credit I ought, perhaps, to apprize my reader, that whatever defects he may discover in my Book, they are to be ascribed folely to myself. As my fequestered life has not allowed me to derive from feveral diftant friends (of intelligence far fuperior to mine on the subject which I presume to treat) that light which might otherwise have embellished my compofition, I ought not to expose them to a suspicion of having suggested, or countenanced any

erroneous ideas, that a production of retired, yet often interrupted study, may happen to contain.

it

To guard myself alfo from a charge of prefumption,

may be proper to declare that, in venturing to write upon Sculpture, I pretend not to inftruct the accomplished artist, or the real connoisseur; (two classes of men whom I ought rather to confult for information, and from whom I muft ever have much to learn!) but I had perfuaded myself, that, by an extensive Poem on this untried fubject, I might be fo fortunate as to promote the celebrity of a friend, in whose talents I delight; and afford fome kind of affiftance to all the admirers of Sculpture, in their various endeavours to naturalize a deferving Art, which may still be confidered as little more than an alien in our country, if we compare the portion of public notice and favour, which it has hitherto obtained among us, to the honour and influence it enjoyed in the ancient world.

To encourage a general delight in the ingenious Arts, and to extend the reputation of their successful profeffors, has ever appeared to me one of the most desirable purposes that Poetry can purfue; and particularly when that purpose is happily blended with the intereft and the honour of friendship.

Should the wishes of those whom I regard induce me, in a season of more tranquillity and leisure, to delineate the rise and progress of modern Art, in another Poem, for which I have abundant materials, I fhall probably introduce that new fubject by a sketch of the injuries that Sculpture fuftained from the fect of Iconoclasts, or Imagebreakers, and the animation it might acquire from the discovery of Herculaneum, and a more spirited research in the fubterranean cities.

I intimate these topics, to obviate any surprise that my reader might feel on not finding them mentioned in the present Work. They appeared to me as more fuited to

form the line of connexion between the two diftinct provinces of ancient and modern Sculpture.

But whatever fortune may attend me as the admirer and the eulogist of your noble art, that you, my excellent friend, may long cultivate and improve it, and that univerfal applause and increasing felicity may be justly and graciously bestowed by earth and Heaven on your labours and your life, is the cordial wish of

APRIL 19, 1800.

Your very fincere and fervent,

Though deeply-afflicted friend,

W. H.