THE translator had nearly completed his task when his attention was directed to an English version of a portion of Lessing's Laocoon which appeared several years ago in a popular magazine. On reference to that work, however, he found that it was not of a nature to induce him to renounce the undertaking he had commenced. Though evidently written by one well qualified to do full justice to the merits of the original, he found that it partook too much of the character of an abridgment to entitle it to be considered, had it even been completed, as a satisfactory translation of Lessing's work. This circumstance, added to the gratifying confirmation of the judiciousness of his selection afforded by the fact of this very work having been made choice of, not only to exhibit the most striking specimen of Lessing's powers, but to form a fitting commencement to a series of specimens of the best German literature, determined the translator to proceed. In selecting this work as his coup d'essai, he has been less guided by the apparent suitableness of the Laocoon to the prevailing taste of the public, than by the acknowledged merits of the work itself, and by the probability of its proving, not only interesting and instructive to the critical reader, but even in some degree practically useful in the prosecution of the Fine Arts. The points of resemblance between the sister arts of Poetry and Painting have employed the pens of various writers. The object of Lessing, on the contrary, is to indicate the features in which they differ, and to mark the boundary line which forms the limit of their respective territories. This object has been much facilitated by the circumstance of the same story having furnished the subject for one of the greatest masterpieces both in sculpture and in poetry, and the author has in consequence very ingeniously illustrated his arguments by a reference to the different mode of treatment adopted by the professors of the respective arts. These differences he attributes, not to mere accident or caprice, but to the powers peculiar to the arts themselves, and which are probably all ultimately referrible to the obvious distinction existing between the means employed by them,—those of the one consisting in images, and of the other in descriptions. The immediate consequence of this distinction is, that the arts of design are much more rapid in their effects than poetry, in as much as the successive description of the various component parts of an object must necessarily be a much slower process than the actual exhibition of the thing itself, in its real form and lineaments;— Segnius irritant animus demissa per aures Thus, in the imitation of bodily objects, the representation of form, the delineation of beauty, and, in short, in rendering all the varied aspects of the face of nature, painting has a decided advantage over poetry; while, on the other hand, in tracing actions from their commencement to their final conclusion, in developing the causes which led to them and the circumstances which have affected them, or in portraying the still more mysterious workings of the soul, poetry possesses powers which painting can never enjoy. It must be observed, too, that though the delineation of objects is, properly speaking, beyond the legitimate province of poetry, yet this art has the power, by means of a single well-chosen trait, operating on the imagination of the hearer, to suggest conceptions which may even surpass the embodied realities of the painter. Such are the grounds of distinction by which Lessing has been guided in his observations in the following Essay. His object has been to |