ow in good time. Were I to be with you,
I should talk--perhaps maliciously--on purpose to see how your features
would unsettle and shift themselves to the vagrant humour, that though one
would know another from habit, and their old acquaintanceship, the painter
would never be able to keep them steadily together. I should laugh to see
every lineament "going ahead," and art "non compos."

I will, however, venture to put down some plain directions how you are to
sit. First, let me tell you how you are not to sit. Don't, in your horror
of a sentimental amiable look, put on yourself the air of a Diogenes, or
you will be like nothing human--and if you shun Diogenes, you may put on
the likeness of a still greater fool. No man living can look more wise
than you; but if you fall out with wisdom, or would in your whim throw
contempt on it, no one can better play the fool. You are the laughing or
crying Philosopher at pleasure--but sit as neither, for in either
character you will set the painter's house in a roar. I fear the very
plaster figures in it will set you off--to see yourself in such motley
company, with Bacchus and Hercules, and Jupiter and Saturn, with his
marble children to devour. You will look Homer and Socrates in the face;
and I know will make antics, throw out, and show fight to the Gladiator.
This may be, if your painter, as many of them do, affect the antique; but
if he be another sort of guess person, it may be worse still with you. You
may not have to make your bow to a Venus Anadyomene--but how will you be
able to face the whole Muggletonian synod? Imagine the "Complete Body,"
from the Evangelical Magazine, framed and glazed, round the walls, and all
looking at you in the condemned cell. Against this you must prepare; for
many country artists prefer this line to the antique. It is their
connexion--and should you make a mistake and go to the wrong man, you
will most assuredly be added to the Convocation, if not put to head a
controversy as frontispiece. It will be in vain for you to say, "Fronti
nulla fides;" "[Greek: gnothi seauton]" before you get there, or nobody
will know you. Take care lest your physiognomy be canvassed by many more
besides the painter. Are you prepared to have your every lineament
scrutinized by every body? to hear behind a screen the disparagement of
your lips, your eyes thought deceitful, and, in addition, a sentence of
general ugliness passed upon you? So you must stoop to paint-pots, h