OCR Text |
Show [ 86 ] Nerved with fine touch, thy fingers (as it turns) Mark the nice bounds of vafes, ewers, and urns ; Round each fair fonn in lines itntnortal trace 2 95 Uncopi~d Beauty, and ideal Grace. " GNoMEs ! as you now diffect: with ham1ners hne The granite-rock, the nodul'd B.int calcine; Grind with firong arm, the circling ch~tz betwixt, Your pure Ka-o-lins and Pc-tun-tfes mixt; 300 O'er each red faggar's burning cave pre:lide, The keen-eyed Fire-Nymphs blazing by your fide; I the reign of one of its bell: princes, Janus, was the oldell: e'poch the Romans knew. The earliell: hill:orians fpeak of the Etrufcans as being then of high antiquity, moll: probably a colony from Phocnicia, to which a Pe!afgian <olony acceded, and was united foon after Deucalion's flood. The peculiar character of their earthen vafes confifl:s in the admirable beauty, fimplicity, and diverlity of form~, which continue the bell: models of ta!lc to the artil1s of the prefent times; and in _a fpecies of non-vitreous encaufl:ic painting, which was reckoned, even in the time of Pliny, among the lo11 arts of antiquity, but which has btely been recovered by the ingenuity and induflry of Mr. Wedgwood. Iris fuppofed that the principal manuf:J.trories were about Nola, at the foot of Vefuvius; for it is in that neighbourhood that the greatefl: quantities of antique vafes hove been founJ; and it is faid that the gener01l tafl:e of the inhabitants is apparently influenced by them; infomuch that fl:rangers coming to Naples, arc commonly Hruck with the diverfity and elegance even of the mofl: ordinary vafes for common ufes. s~e D'Hancarville's preliminary difcourfcs to the magnificent collection of Etrufcan vafcs, publifhed by Sir Willi~m Hamilton. |