II. PART the drawing and colouring of the picture, is altogether different from that drawing and colouring. It arifes fometimes from fympathy with, fometimes from antipathy and averfion to, the fentiments, emotions, and paffions which the countenance, the action, the air and attitude of the perfons represented fuggeft. The melody and harmony of inftrumental Mufic, on the contrary, do not dif tinctly and clearly fuggeft any thing that is different from that melody and harmony. Whatever effect it produces is the immediate effect of that melody and harmony, and not of fomething elfe which is fignified and fuggefted by them: they in fact fignify and fuggeft nothing. It may be proper to fay that the complete art of painting, the complete merit of a picture, is compofed of three diftinct arts or merits; that of drawing, that of colouring, and that of expreffion. But to fay, as Mr. Avifon does, that the complete art of a musician, the complete merit of a piece of Mufic, is compofed or made up of three diftinct arts or merits, that of melody, that of harmony, and that of expreffion, is to fay, that it is made up of melody and harmony, and of the immediate and neceffary effect of melody and harmony: the divifion is by no means logical; expreffion in painting is not the neceffary effect either of good drawing or of good colouring, or of both together; II. together; a picture may be both finely drawn P ART and finely coloured, and yet have very little expreffion: but that effect upon the mind which is called expreffion in Mufic, is the immediate and neceffary effect of good melody. In the power of producing this effect confifts the effential characteristic which distinguishes fuch melody from what is bad or indifferent. Harmony may enforce the effect of good melody, but without good melody the most skilful harmony can produce no effect which deferves the name of expreffion; it can do little more than fatigue and confound the ear. A painter may poffefs, in a very eminent degree, the talents of drawing and colouring, and yet poffefs that of expreffion in a very inferior degree. Such a painter, too, may have great merit. In the judgment of Du Piles, even the celebrated Titian was a painter of this kind. But to fay that a mufician poffeffed the talents of melody and harmony in a very eminent degree, and that of expreffion in a very inferior one, would be to fay, that in his works the cause was not followed by its neceffary and proportionable effect. A musician may be a very skilful harmonist, and yet be defective in the talents of melody, air, and expreffion; his fongs may be dull and without effect. Such a mufician too may have a certain degree of merit, not unlike that of a man of great learning, PAR T learning, who wants fancy, tafte, and in Inftrumental Mufic, therefore, though it may, no doubt, be confidered in some respects as an imitative art, is certainly less so than any other which merits that appellation; it can imitate but a few objects, and even these fo imperfectly, that without the accompaniment of fome other art, its imitation is scarce ever intelligible: imitation is by no means effential to it, and the principal effect which it is capable of producing arifes from powers altogether different from thofe of imitation. PART THE PART III. HE imitative powers of Dancing are much fuperior to those of inftrumental Mufic, and are at leaft equal, perhaps fuperior, to those of any other art. Like inftrumental Mufic, however, it is not neceffarily or effentially imitative, and it can produce very agreeable effects, without imitating any thing. In the greater part of our common dances there is little or no imitation, and they confist almoft entirely of a fucceffion of fuch steps, geftures, and motions, regulated by the time and measure of Mufic, as either difplay III. difplay extraordinary grace or require extra- PART ordinary agility. Even fome of our dances, which are faid to have been originally imitative, have, in the way in which we practise them, almost ceafed to be fo. The minuet, in which the woman, after paffing and repaffing the man feveral times, first gives him up one hand, then the other, and then both hands, is faid to have been originally a Moorish dance, which emblematically reprefented the paffion of love. Many of my readers may have frequently danced this dance, and, in the opinion of all who faw them, with great grace and propriety, though neither they nor their spectators once thought of the allegorical meaning which it orginally intended to exprefs. A certain measured, cadenced ftep, commonly called a dancing ftep, which keeps time with, and as it were beats the measure of, the Mufic which accompanies and directs it, is the effential characteristic which diftinguishes a dance from every other fort of motion. When the dancer, moving with a step of this kind, and obferving this time and measure, imitates either the ordinary or the more important actions of human life, he shapes and fashions, as it were, a thing of one kind, into the resemblance of another thing of a very different kind: his art conquers the difparity which Nature has placed between the PART the imitating and the imitated object, and has upon that account fome degree of that fort of merit which belongs to all the imitative arts. This disparity, indeed, is not fo great as in fome other of thofe arts, nor confequently the merit of the imitation which conquers it. Nobody would compare the merit of a good imitative dancer to that of a good painter or ftatuary. The dancer, however, may have a very confiderable degree of merit, and his imitation perhaps may fometimes be capable of giving us as much pleafure as that of either of the other two artists. All the fubjects, either of Statuary or of History Painting, are within the compafs of his. imitative powers; and in representing them, his art has even fome advantage over both the other two. Statuary and History Painting can reprefent but a fingle inftant of the action which they mean to imitate: the caufes which prepared, the confequences which followed, the fituation of that fingle inftant are altogether beyond the compafs of their imitation. A pantomime dance can reprefent diftinctly thofe caufes and confequences; it is not confined to the fituation of a fingle inftant; but, like Epic Poetry, it can represent all the events of a long ftory, and exhibit a long train and fucceffion of connected and interefting fituations. It is capable therefore of affecting us much more than |