In portraits of characters, as we may call those that give a picture of the manners, the artist, if he be of real ability, will not go to work on the possibility of an abstract idea. All he intends, is to shew that some one quality predominates: and this he images strongly and by such signatures as are most conspicuous in the operation of the leading passion. And when he hath done this, we may, in common speech or in compliment, if we please, to his art, say of such a portrait that it images to us not the man but the passion; just as the antients observed of the famous statue of Apollodorus by Silarion, that it expressed not the angry Apollodorus, but his passion of anger⋆. But by this must be understood only that he has well expressed the leading parts of the designed character. For the rest he treats his subject as he would any other; that is, he represents the concomitant affections, or considers merely that general symmetry and proportion which are expected in a human figure. And this is to copy nature which affords no specimen of a man turned all into a single passion. No metamorphosis could be more strange or incredible. Yet portraits of this vicious taste are the admiration of common starers, who, if they find a picture of a miser for instance (as there is no commoner subject of moral portraits) in a collection, where any muscle is strained and feature hardened into the expression of this idea, never fail to profess their wonder and approbation of it. —On this idea of excellence, Reubens’ book of the PASSIONS must be said to contain a set of the justest moral portraits: And the CHARACTERS of Theophrastus might be recommended, in a dramatic view, as preferable to those to Terence.