The Fancies of Poets, Painters, and Gravers, are No Evidences of Truth;
for People are Partial in their Own Cases, and Every Man will make the
Best of his Own Tale. ’Tis against Common Equity for the same People to
be both Parties and Judges, and That’s the Case here betwixt the _Man_
and the _Lyon_. Now the _Lyon_ is much in the Right, that Characters,
Pictures, and Images, are All as the Painter, the Carver, or the Statuary
pleases; and that there’s a Great Difference betwixt a Flight of Fancy,
and the History of Nature. ’Tis much Easier for a _Man_ to make an _Ass_
of a _Lyon_ upon a _Pedestal_, then in a _Forrest_; and where it lies at
his Choice, whether the Giant shall Kill the Squire, or the Squire the
Giant. Argument is not the Work of the Chissel; neither does the Design
of the Artist conclude the Truth of the Fact: but there is somewhat
_Heroical_ yet in the Imagination, though the Piece was never Drawn from
the Life.