en than the pencil.

_B_. That is strange, when you have just said they are used to bring
their objects before the eye.

_P_. In poetry the personification or allegoric figure is generally
indistinct, and therefore does not strike us as forcibly as to make us
attend to its improbability; but in painting, the figures being all much
more distinct, their improbability becomes apparent, and seizes our
attention to it. Thus the person of Concealment is very indistinct and
therefore does not compel us to attend to its improbability, in the
following beautiful lines of Shakespear:

"--She never told her love;
But let Concealment, like a worm i' th' bud,
Feed on her damask cheek."--

But in these lines below the person of Reason obtrudes itself into our
company, and becomes disagreeable by its distinctness, and consequent
improbability.

"To Reason I flew, and intreated her aid,
Who paused on my case, and each circumstance weigh'd;
Then gravely reply'd in return to my prayer,
That Hebe was fairest of all that were fair.
That's a truth, reply'd I, I've no need to be taught,
I came to you, Reason, to find out a fault.
If that's all, says Reason, return as you came,
To find fault with Hebe would forfeit my name."

Allegoric figures are on this account in general less manageable in
painting and in statuary than in poetry: and can seldom be introduced in
the two former arts in company with natural figures, as is evident
from the ridiculous effect of many of the paintings of Rubens in the
Luxemburgh gallery; and for this reason, because their improbability
becomes more striking, when there are the figures of real persons by
their side to compare them with. Mrs. Angelica Kauffman, well apprised of
this circumstance, has introduced no mortal figures amongst her Cupids
and her Graces. And the great Roubiliac, in his unrivalled monument of
Time and Fame struggling for the trophy of General Fleming, has only hung
up a medallion of the head of the hero of the piece. There are however
some allegoric figures, which we have so often heard described or seen
delineated, that we almost forget that they do not exist in common life;
and hence view them without astonishment; as the figures of the heathen
mythology, of angels, devils, death and time; and almost believe them
to be realities, even when they are mixed with representations of the
natural for