in painting and sculpture, the situation of a figure with regard to the eye, and of the several principal members thereof with regard to one another, whereby its action is expressed. A considerable part of the art of a painter consists in adjusting the postures, or in giving the most agreeable ones to his figures, in accommodating them to the characters of the respective figures, and the part each has in the action, and in conducting and in pursuing them throughout.

Postures are either natural or artificial.

Natural postures are such as nature seems to have had a view to in the mechanism of the body, or rather such as the ordinary actions and occasions of life lead us to exhibit while young, and while the joints, muscles, ligaments, &c. are flexible.

Artificial postures, are those which some extraordinary views or studies occasion us to learn; as those of dancing, fencing, &c. Such also are those of our balance and posture matters.

A painter would be strangely puzzled with the figure of Clark (a late famous posture-master in London) in a history-piece. This man, we are told in the Phil. Transf. had such an absolute command of his muscles, &c., that he could disjoint almost his whole body; so that he imposed on the great surgeon Mullens, who looked upon him as in such a miserable condition, he would not undertake his cure. Though a well-made man, he would appear with all the deformities imaginable; hunch-backed, pot-bellied, sharp-breasted, &c. He disjointed his arms, shoulders, legs, and thighs; and rendered himself such an object of pity, that he has frequently extorted money, in quality of a cripple, from the same company in which he had the minute before been in quality of a comrade. He would make his hips stand a considerable way out from his loins, and so high as to invade the place of his back. Yet his face was the most changeable part about him, and showed more postures than all the rest. Of himself he could exhibit all the uncouth odd faces of a quaker's meeting.