in in 1748;
lived in Leipsic a second time, engaged in writing plays,
poems and books; removed from Berlin to Breslau in 1765,
where he wrote his masterpiece, "Laocoon," published in
1766; in 1769 made librarian of the ducal library in
Wolfenbuttel, which place he held until his death.

I

POETRY AND PAINTING COMPARED[14]

The first person who compared painting and poetry with one another was
a man of refined feeling, who became aware of a similar effect
produced upon himself by both arts. He felt both represent what is
absent as if it were present, and appearance as if it were reality;
that both deceived, and that the deception of both is pleasing.

[Footnote 14: From the preface to the "Laocoon." Translated by E. C.
Beasley and Helen Zimmern. An earlier translation of the "Laocoon" was
made by William Ross in 1836.]

A second observer sought to penetrate below the surface of this
pleasure, and discovered that in both it flowed from the same source.
Beauty, the idea of which we first deduce from bodily objects,
possesses universal laws, applicable to more things than one; to
actions and to thoughts as well as to forms.

A third reflected upon the value and distribution of these universal
laws, and noticed that some are more predominant in painting, others
in poetry; that thus, in the latter case, poetry will help to explain
and illustrate painting; in the former, painting will do the same for
poetry.

The first was the amateur, the second the philosopher, the third the
critic.

The first two could not easily make a wrong use of either their
feelings or conclusions. On the other hand, the value of the critic's
observations mainly depends upon the correctness of their application
to the individual case, and since for one clear-sighted critic there
have always been fifty ingenious ones, it would have been a wonder if
this application had always been applied with all that caution which
is required to hold the balance equally between the two arts.

If Apelles and Protogenes, in their lost writings on painting,
affirmed and illustrated its laws by the previously established rules
of poetry, we may feel sure that they did it with that moderation and
accuracy with which we now see, in the works of Aristotle, Cicero,
Horace, and Quintilian, the principles and experience of painting
applied to eloquence and poetry. It is the privilege of the ancients
never in any matter to do too muc