ment men, among whom M. SENNERIER, the Author of this work, deferves a very diftinguished rank, on account of his extenfive knowledge in various branches of literature and science.

If we go, with our Author, fome years backward, we find another shining lift of literary and philofophical worthies; fuch as Abauzit, Burlamaqui, Butini, Calandrini, Cramer, Jallabert, Turretini, Romilli, and many more, whofe merits and labours are appreciated by our Author, in a very judicious and interesting manner. As to the article of 7. 7. Rouleau, we are free to fay, that it did not quite anfwer our expectations. The portrait here drawn of this ftrange man, fo fublime in genius, and so extravagant in character, is imperfect in defign, faint in expreffion, and not fufficiently vivid and glowing in the colouring It does more honour to the candid and benevolent heart of M. SENNEBIER, than to the vigour of his pencil. He begins it by predicting, that both the enthufiaftic votaries of Rouffeau, and his violent detractors, will be diffatisfied with his account. So much the better, fays he; this dissatisfaction will be a proof to me that I have hit upon the truth: we verily believe that M. SENNEBIER has faid nothing but the truth, but we are as fully perfuaded that he has not faid the whole truth. It is impoffible for a feeling mind to perufe Rouffeau's CONFESSIONS, and to estimate his character from his own account of its degradations and contradictions, and his own panegyric on its comparative excellence, when confidered with thofe of the firft worthies of the human race, without the ftrongeft emotions of one kind or another. For his character exhibits, after all, the Rrangeft and the moft humiliating contrafts;-lively and fublime moral feelings perpetually counteracted by imperious paffions, a proud and prefumptuous felf-love, and a mean, fufpicious, and reftlefs fpirit; in a word, a motley affociation of the most elevated fentiments with the lowest propenfities, and the whole fet in fermentation by a brain palpably moon-fruck, and heated to a certain degree of infanity. It has been alleged, in favour of Rouffeau, that his avowal of his vices proved him to be frank, candid, and ingenuous; but this apology requires modification; for there is a degree of franknefs that favours of cynical indelicacy and impudence; and there are vices which ought to be rather wept over in private, than daringly expofed to the eye of the Public, when their manifeftation can answer no ufeful purpofe, and is more adapted to difguft than to correct. As a writer, indeed, Rouffeau foars in the higheft clafs. In beauty, force, and originality of expreffion he is truly great-and who ever painted the paffions like him?

One of the laft articles we find in this volume contains an account of the character, and the literary and theological labours of the Rev. M. Charles Chais, who died last year at the Hague, 003

in

in the eighty-fifth year of his age, and had been one of the paftors of the French church there, from the year 17.8. This eminent man, who affociated the labours of a ftudious life with all the pleafing and interefting qualities that conftitute an agreeable member of fociety, was fingularly refpected by perfons of all ranks and stations. His knowledge was extenfive, and embraced a great variety of objects. His converfation was uncommonly pleafing and inftructive; his public difcoveries were folid and judicious, animated with a grave, affecting, copious, and mafculine eloquence, and delivered with grace, dignity, and a remarkable energy that commanded attention, and made a general and powerful impreffion. His commentary on the hiftorical books of the Old Teftament, of which the two laft volumes are foon to be published, is a valuable compilation of the best Englith expofitors, enriched with ingenious obfervations of his own, and the remarks of feveral modern writers and travellers, who have thrown light, by their difcoveries, on many paffages of the facred writings. M. Chais, who was one of the first and principal promoters of the falutary practice of inoculation in Holland, compofed an excellent differtation on that subject; defigned chiefly to remove the religious fcruples that retarded its progrefs. This differtation is extant in the Memoirs of the Society of Haarlem, of which he was a member. His other productions are enumerated in the work before us; and his literary and paftoral character, as drawn by M. SENNEBIER, entitles him to a very high rank among the divines of the prefent century.

ART. XXXVII.

Della Patria, &c. i. e. Concerning the Country in which the Arts of Defign and Painting were firft cultivated. By Count J. B. GHERARD D'ARCO, &C. 8vo. Cremona. 1785.

THE

HE queftion difcuffed in this learned and ingenious publication is by no means fo un important as it may seem at first fight. It is connected with the rife and progress of the fine arts, and thus belongs more or lefs directly to the hiftory of the human mind; and its difcuffion, moreover, embraces feveral curious points of literature relative to the geography, history, and migrations of ancient tribes and peoples. In the folution of this queftion, the noble Author maintains, in oppofition to an ancient, and alfo a modern and prevalent opinion, that the cradle of the fine arts, under confideration, was neither rocked in Egypt nor in Greece, but in his native Italy. This is a bold affertion; and what a legion of poets, philofophers, virtuofos, and philo. logifts has he to combat before he can establish it! Horace comes and tells him, that conquered Greece captivated, civilized her fierce victors, and introduced the arts into ruftic Latium. Winkelman, and many others, relate the fame ftory; but our Author, little moved by this oppofition, means to prove, that though in a certain

8

certain period of their hiftory the Romans were, indeed, inftructed in the arts by the people they had conquered, yet the latter had been their difciples before they became their mafters.

There are, indeed, fome fpecious arguments that may be, and have been, produced in favour of their opinion, who think that the first introduction of the arts of defign into Italy among the Hetrurians, is to be attributed to the Greeks. Winkelman refers it to the Pelafgi, who, as he fuppofes, migrated from Greece at a very early period, in order to form fettlements in Italy. But our Author arms himfelf with the authorities of Thucydides, Apollonius, Sophocles, and other ancient writers; and maintains that the Pelafgi were not Greeks, but Hetrurians or Tyrrhenians, who, after many voyages, fixed for fome time their refidence in Greece (where they were always confidered as ftrangers), and afterward returned to Italy, whence they came. Several collateral circumftances, which Count D'ARCO is careful not to omit, tend to corroborate his hypothefis. One is, the ftate of navigation at the period when the Pelafgi came firft, according to Winkelman, or returned, according to our Author, into Italy at that period, navigation, if it exifted at all, was in its infancy in Greece; whereas it was then in a flourishing flate among the Hetrurians. At the fame period alfo, the civil and political ftate of Greece was nearly favage and barbarous, as our Author affirms on the credit of Thucydides, while several ancient writers make honourable mention of the political confti. tution of Hetruria. He obferves farther, that the Pelafgi, when they arrived in Greece, were in a manner held facred, on account of their extraordinary learning and knowledge, whereas their defcendants, when they returned to Italy, were looked upon by their countrymen the Hetrurians as ignorant and unpolifhed, because they had not kept pace with the progreffive improvement of the arts in their country, during their abfence.

Strabo makes mention indeed of certain Grecian colonies, who, about three centuries after the time of Homer, formed fettlements in Italy, and built the cities of Spina and Ravenna; and this fact has been employed by Winkelman to confirm his hypothefis; but our Author proves the tranfitory duration of these colonies, who were foon driven out of Italy by the Hetrurians. As to the Aufonians, they were originally a people of Liguria, who, about eighty years before the Trojan war, paffed into Sicily, under a chief named Siculus, and thence into Greece; whence, as the Pelafgi had done before them, they returned, after fome generations, into their country, conducted by Aufonius *. It was after this epocha that certain Grecian colonies formed

*This is founded on the relation of Greek writers quoted by Dionyf. Halicar,

fettlements in the fouthern parts of Italy, which were known under the denomination of Magna Grecia; to them therefore the introduction of the arts of defign cannot, as our Author reasons, be attributed, fince they had been long before cultivated by the Hetrurians.

But if our Author's hypothefis be the true one, how comes it that we find Greek letters, Grécian mythology, and even events of Grecian history, on the Hetrurian vafes, urns, fepulchral monuments, and other ancient remains? Our Author ftruggles very learnedly with this objection; and he brings forth, with the affiftance of Mazzochi (heavily loaded with Oriental and Grecian erudition), a copious variety of arguments and examples to remove it. There is fome confufion in the manner in which he employs this erudition; and a little more method and logic would have rendered his victory more evident and decifive. However, he proves, with at leaft a great degree of probability, fome points which indeed feem to remove the objection: he fhews that the Hetrurians and Greeks both derived their graphical or written characters from the Phenicians; the Hetrurians, first, in order of time, as they practifed navigation and were a civilized people long before the Greeks; and this circumflance accounts for the resemblance which learned men have difcovered (and perhaps exaggerated) between the Hetrurian and Grecian letters; a refemblance which they have, according to our Author, erroneously employed to make us believe that the former were derived from the latter. He removes the objection brought from mythology, by obferving that the Tufcan divinities and heroes acquired the Grecian denominations in times pofterior to thofe in which they were known and worshipped in Hetruria, and he brings feveral remarkable examples, fuch as the name of Saturn, the ftories of the Titans, Phaeton, and Tantalus, to fhew that the most ancient perfonages in Pagan mythoJogy had an Italian origin. He obferves, moreover, that the character and genius of the religion and facred rites of the Hetrurians announce the most remote antiquity, and that many of them, according to the exprefs affirmation of Plato*, were adopted in Greece. Herodotus is alfo brought in to prove the fame thing; for he affirms that the Greeks took many of their religious ceremonies and divinities from the Pelafgi, who, as we have seen above, paffed originally from Hetruria into Greece, and afterwards returned into Italy. It is true, that a refpectable number of learned men agree in confidering the Achæans, Cretans, Lacedemonians, and other emigrants from Peloponnefus, as the founders of the greatest part of the Herurian cities. But our Author does not think his opinion, concerning the point in

question, at all affected by this argument, which M. Villoifon has employed to prove that the Hetrurians derived the arts of defign from the Greeks. Suppofing thefe pretended emigrations to have been real, and not the fictions of Grecian vanity, which, on many occafions, has made bold invafions upon hiftorical truth, in order to acquire the honour of a remote and ancient civilization, our Author thinks that his proofs of the real ancient civilization of the Hetrurians, and the flourishing state of their marine before the name of Greece was known in history, are abundantly fufficient to invalidate the conclufions drawn from thefe emigrations against his hypothefis. This is the fubftance of the first chapter of the work before us.

In the fecond, our Author, with a vaft profufion of real and extenfive learning, undertakes to prove, that Greece not only derived the arts of design from the Hetrurians, but that it was highly indebted to this ancient people for its progress in these arts. This tenet has ftill more the appearance of a paradox than the former, and yet our Author has found out a method of rendering it plaufible. He fets out by proving (as we may call it) à priori, that the Hetrurians must have made a more rapid progrefs than the Greeks, in the arts of defign. Why? Because on the spot where the first productions of an art appear, there is naturally to be expected the greatest spirit of activity and ardour in cultivating, improving, and bringing it to perfection. But this metaphyfical argument is not decifive; for the fpirit of activity which is thus fuppofed to be animated by invention, may be counteracted by accidental circumftances. Winkelman affirms, that the Hetrurians only carried the arts to a very limited and fcanty degree of improvement and perfection, at which their progrefs stopped fhort, like that of the Chinese, who anticipated the Europeans in feveral difcoveries, which they neither completed nor improved. He, indeed, alleges reafons for this fact (if the fact be true), that are not more decifive than those brought by our Author to fupport the other fide of the question. His reafois are, ift, the fanguinary and gloomy character of the rdigious rites of the Hetrurians, and their propenfity to divinaion, which must have infpired a melancholy frame and temperof mind, highly unfavourable to the culture and progrefs of the arts; 2dly, their continual wars with the Romans, which only ce fed with their entire deftruction as a people. This fecond reifon is abfurd in the extreme; fince it is well known, or, at leaft, is well proved, in the work before us, that the most refined period of the arts among the Hetrurians was fome ages anterior their wars with the Romans. To the first of these reasons our Author objects, that the theogony and religious worship of the Hetrurians did not effentially differ from those of the Greeks, aid he makes feveral ingenious obfervations, which are

defigned