Note 140 — BOOK I. (continued 3)

None however of these great men presumed to despise Michelangiolo so much, as to compare the picture of Christ, in the Minerva, to an executioner; like the author of the Arte di Vedere. Mengs, whom he rather flatters than follows, would have disdained to use this and similar expressions; but it is the office of adulators not merely to approve the opinion of the object flattered, but greatly to exaggerate it. Juvenal, with his peculiar penetration into the vices of mankind, thus describes one of the race. (See Satire iii. v. 100.)