e." He speaks somewhat too slightingly of Pausanias,[1] as "the
indiscriminate chronicler of legitimate tradition and legendary trash,"
considering that he praises "the scrupulous diligence with which he
examined what fell under his own eye." He recommends to the epic or
dramatic artist the study of the heroics of the elder, and the Eicones
or Picture Galleries of the elder and younger Philostratus.

"The innumerable hints, maxims, anecdotes, descriptions, scattered over
Lucian, Oelian, Athenaeus, Achilles Tatius, Tatian Pollux, and many
more, may be consulted to advantage by the man of taste and letters, and
probably may be neglected without much loss by the student." "Of modern
writers on art Vasari leads the van; theorist, artist, critic, and
biographer, in one. The history of modern art owes, no doubt, much to
Vasari; he leads us from its cradle to its maturity with the anxious
diligence of a nurse; but he likewise has her derelictions: for more
loquacious than ample, and less discriminating styles than eager to
accumulate descriptions, he is at an early period exhausted by the
superlatives lavished on inferior claims, and forced into frigid
rhapsodies and astrologic nonsense to do justice to the greater. He
swears by the divinity of M. Agnolo. He tells us that he copied every
figure of the Capella Sistina and the stanze of Raffaelle, yet his
memory was either so treacherous, or his rapidity in writing so
inconsiderate, that his account of both is a mere heap of errors and
unpardonable confusion, and one might almost fancy he had never entered
the Vatican." He is less pleased with the "rubbish of his
contemporaries, or followers, from Condior to Ridolfi, and on to
Malvasia." All is little worth "till the appearance of Lanzi, who, in
his 'Storia Pittorica della Italia,' has availed himself of all the
information existing in his time, has corrected most of those who wrote
before him, and, though perhaps not possessed of great discriminative
powers, has accumulated more instructive anecdotes, rescued more
deserving names from oblivion, and opened a wider prospect of art, than
all his predecessors." But for the valuable notes of Reynolds, the idle
pursuit of Du Fresnoy to clothe the precepts of art in Latin verse,
would be useless. "The notes of Reynolds, treasures of practical
observation, place him among those whom we may read with profit." De
Piles and Felibien are spoken of next, as the teachers of "what may be
lear