single consideration that his version was in prose were in itself sufficient; because, as Mr. Pope has justly observed, verse and even rhyme is the best mode of conveying preceptive truths," as in this way they are more shortly expressed and more easily retained."* Still less need I make an apology for undertaking it after Mr. Wills, who in the year 1754 published a translation of it in metre without rhyme. † This gentleman, a Painter by profession, assumed for his motto, Tractant fabrilia fabri; * See his Advertisement before his Essay on Man. +I call it so rather than Blank Verse, because it was devoid of all harmony of numbers. The beginning, which I shall here insert, is a sufficient proof of the truth of this assertion: As painting, Poesy, so similar To Poesy be Painting: emulous Alternate change the office and the name; Mute verse is this, that speaking picture call'd. From this little specimen the reader will easily form a judgement of the whole. but however adroit he might be in handling the tools of his own art, candour must own that the tools of a Poet and a translator were beyond his management: attempting also a task absolutely impossible, that of expressing the sense of his author in an equal number of lines, he produced a version, which (if it was ever read through by any person except myself) is now totally forgotten. Nevertheless I must do him the justice to own, that he understood the original text; that he detected some errors in Mr. Dryden's translation, which had escaped Mr. Jervas (assisted, as it is said, by his friend Mr. Pope) in that corrected edition which Mr. Graham inscribed to the Earl of Burlington; and that I have myself sometimes profited by his labours. It is also from his edition that I reprint the following Life of the Author, which was drawn up from Felibien and other Biographers by the late Dr. Birch, who, with his usual industry, has collected all they have said on Fresnoy's THE LIFE OF MONS. DU FRESNOY. CHARLES ALPHONSE DU FRESNOY was born at Paris in the year 1611. His father, who was an eminent apothecary in that city, intending him for the profession of physick, gave him as good an education as possible. During the first year, which he spent at the college, he made a very considerable progress in his studies: but as soon as he was raised to the higher classes, and began to contract a taste of poetry, his genius for it opened itself, and he carried all the prizes in it, which were proposed to excite the emulation of his fellow-students. His inclination for it was heightened by exercise; and his earliest performances showed, that he was capable of becoming one of the greatest poets of his age, if his love of painting, which equally possessed him, had not divided his time and application. At last he laid aside all thoughts of the study of physick, and declared absolutely for that of painting, notwithstanding the opposition of his parents, who, by all kinds of severity, endeavoured to divert him from pursuing his passion for that art, the profession of which they unjustly considered in a very contemptible light. But the strength of his inclination defeating all the measures taken to suppress it, he took the first opportunity of cultivating his favourite study. He was nineteen or twenty years of age when he began to learn to design under Francis Perier; and having spent two years in the school of that painter, and of Simon Voüet, he thought proper to take a journey into Italy, where he arrived in the end of 1633, or the beginning of 1634. As he had, during his studies, applied himself very much to that of geometry, he |