Variety is the great and only rule to which decorators submit. Perceiving that there is no perfect resemblance between two things in nature, they likewise forsake it in their decorations; and careless of anxious twining, leave it to the parts themselves to find their like, as the atoms of Epicurus did. This liberty we owe to the very nation, which, after having nobly exceeded all the narrow bounds of social formalities, bestows so much pains upon communicating her improvements to her neighbours. This style in decorations got the epithet of Barroque taste, derived from a word signifying pearls and teeth of unequal size[68].
Shells have at least as good a claim for being admitted among our decorations, as the heads of sheep and oxen. You know that the ancients placed those heads, stript of the skin, on the frizes, especially of the Doric order, between the Triglyphs, or on the Metopes. We even meet with them on the Corinthian frise of an old temple of Vesta, at Tivoli[69]; on tombs, as on one of the Metellus-family near Rome, and another of Munatius Plancus near Gaeta[70]; on vases, as on a pair in the royal cabinet at Dresden. Some modern artists, finding them perhaps unbecoming, changed them into thunderbolts, like Vignola, or to roses, like Palladio and Scamozzi[71].
We conclude from all this, that learning never had, nor indeed ought to have, any share in an art so nearly related to what we call Lusus Naturæ.
Thus the ancients thought: for, pray, what could be meant by a lizard on Mentor’s cup?[72] The
Picti squallentia terga lacerti
Virg. G. IV.
make, to be sure, a lovely image amidst the flowers of a Rachel Ruysch, but a very poor figure on a cup. Of what mysterious meaning are birds picking grapes from vines, on an urn?[73] Images, perhaps, as void of sense, and as arbitrary, as the fable of Ganymede embroidered on the mantle, which Æneas presented to Cloanthus, as a reward of his victory in the naval games[74].
To conclude: is there any thing contradictory between trophies and the hunting-house of a Prince? Surely the author, though so zealous a champion for the Greek taste, cannot pretend to propose to us that of King Philip and the Macedonians, who, by the account of Pausanias[75], did not erect their own trophies. Diana perhaps, amidst her nymphs and hunting-equipages,