Ut Pictura Poesis

The Latin poem De arte graphica by Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy was edited with a translation into French prose and with notes by Roger de Piles in 1668; and in 1695 John Dryden, “to satisfy the desires of so many gentlemen who were willing to give the world this useful work,” not only translated de Piles's book into English prose but also supplied his translation with an “original preface containing a parallel between painting and poetry.” Dryden's Parallel is one of the least original, but it is not the least interesting of his literary essays: Saintsbury calls it “the first writing at any length by a very distinguished Englishman of letters on the subject of pictorial art.” Together with his translation of du Fresnoy and de Piles, it forms for us English-speaking people the handiest introduction to that long-lived esthetic theory founded upon the proposition Ut pictura poesis. Lessing seems to have seen in Dryden's preface some suggestion of a deviation of the parallel lines from the common direction; or perhaps the point at which they ought to have parted company; for he wrote, “ Falsche Übertragung des mahlerischen Ideals in die Poesie. Dort ist es ein Ideal der Körper, hier muss es ein Ideal der Handlungen seyn. Dryden in s. Vorrede zum Fresnoy.”