PREFACE.

POETRY, Painting and Music are three sisters, who may be called the Graces of the mind. Their common parent was Melancholy, who, in the most shaded hour, casts a look of complacency upon her offspring. The sisters, who are strangers to existence independent of attendance upon human nature, and emulously invest all the passages of the feelings, exert their influences without the invasion of the rights of each other; and often unexpectedly meet within the chambers of the heart, where harmony sits upon their mutual controul.

Painting, who now impetuously gains upon the visual organs, and thence obtains an easy access to her destination, felt a protracted period of infancy: the simple, unassociated line marked at first her path, until the friendly but colourless shadow cast itself upon the vacuity; and she still remains a local being asking restoration from manual skill. That light, which is essentially necessary to her existence, is disdained by her sister, Music; who seeks alone the motionless atmosphere, through which she tremulates: but her period of being is transitory; and she only struggles to die.

Poetry, who celebrates the perfections of both, and often accompanies the latter, lays claim to an existence independent of materiality. Her cause is an endeavour to represent subjects to the mind in a more forceable manner than can be effected by ideas unassociated; and the perfection of her power approaches, when she finds in remote objects the simile which faithfully accompanies ideas in their progress, or the metaphor which inwraps and bears them across the imagination.

A