e seen the feet and ankles, with some folds of garment, lying also on
a matt; and though the intermediate space is a solid stone-wall, yet the
imagination supplies the deficiency, and the whole figure seems to exist
before our eyes. Does not this resemble one of the arts both of the
painter and the poet? The former often shows a muscular arm amidst a
group of figures, or an impassioned face; and, hiding the remainder of
the body behind other objects, leaves the imagination to compleat it. The
latter, describing a single feature or attitude in picturesque words,
produces before the mind an image of the whole.

I remember seeing a print, in which was represented a shrivelled hand
stretched through an iron grate, in the stone floor of a prison-yard, to
reach at a mess of porrage, which affected me with more horrid ideas of
the distress of the prisoner in the dungeon below, than could have
been perhaps produced by an exhibition of the whole person. And in the
following beautiful scenery from the Midsummer-night's dream, (in which I
have taken the liberty to alter the place of a comma), the description of
the swimming step and prominent belly bring the whole figure before our
eyes with the distinctness of reality.

When we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive,
And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;
Which she with pretty and with swimming gate,
Following her womb, (then rich with my young squire),
Would imitate, and sail upon the land.

There is a third sister-feature, which belongs both to the pictorial and
poetic art; and that is the making sentiments and passions visible, as
it were, to the spectator; this is done in both arts by describing or
portraying the effects or changes which those sentiments or passions
produce upon the body. At the end of the unaltered play of Lear, there
is a beautiful example of poetic painting; the old King is introduced as
dying from grief for the loss of Cordelia; at this crisis, Shakespear,
conceiving the robe of the king to be held together by a clasp,
represents him as only saying to an attendant courtier in a faint voice,
"Pray, Sir, undo this button,--thank you, Sir," and dies. Thus by the
art of the poet, the oppression at the bosom of the dying King is made
visible, not described in words.

_B_. What are the features, in which these Sister-arts do not resemble
each other?

_P_. The ingenious Bishop Berkeley, in his Treatise on Vision,