The ancient artists, in representing the sylvan deities, centaurs,
fawns, or satyrs, did not merely give them hair and cloven feet, but
bestowed on them a certain combination of character, very difficult
in execution, but which alone can reconcile us to the palpable
absurdity; a coltish wildness in gesture; a goatish expression of
countenance or festive hilarity, with features in which there is more
of common nature than of dignity, and which are in some conformity
with the hair and the hoof; a body and limbs muscular and
powerful; a skin browned, and of a high colour, such as the savage
wildness of their life may be supposed to produce.
Modern artists hazard their reputation, when they are employed
in bestowing the line of beauty on a face or limb, by giving any
particular curve or gradation of outline; and they appear to me
equally to depart from all the modes and habits of composition of
the ancients, and to lose all chance of imitating the antique with
success. We see the artists of antiquity combining acknowledged
excellencies, but not following a vague and evanescent form of
beauty. They seem always to have endeavoured to imitate some
acknowledged beautiful form of age or sex. First, to have combined
the beautiful forms of individuals of the same sex and age,
and then to have combined the beauty and character of different
ages : thus, in the Apollo, there is united manly dignity in the proportions
and attitude, with youthful beauty in the simplicity of the
contour; nay, they even ventured to combine the beauties of both
sexes, for example, in the young Bacchus, or more decidedly in the
hermaphrodite. The highest effort of art was to represent man
deified, and purified from the grosser character of nature. Of these
species of ideal representations are all the sculptures of the deities.
Surely the artists in all this were not trusting to their own ideas
of beauty, nor considering it as an abstract quality. As in the antique,
therefore, each variety had its character established in nature,
and resulting from an imitation of particular beauties, it must be
impossible to imitate their works, or even to appreciate their high
degree of merit, until we are awakened to natural beauty of sex,
age, character, and expression. It really appears to me, that those
enthusiasts in the antique either mistake the nature and foundation
of their sentiments, or have no real feeling of the beauty of
form, when they affect to despise natural beauty; for to be susceptible
of the beautiful forms of nature is the first step to the admiration
of the antique.
Sir Joshua Keynolds has given a very ingenious view of the
theory of beauty; that beauty is the medium or centre of the
various forms of the individual; that every species of animal has a
fixed and determinate form, towards which nature is continually
inclining, like various lines terminating in a centre, or like pendulums
vibrating in different directions oyer one central point, and
as they all cross the centre, though only one passes through any
other point, so it will be found that perfect beauty is oftener produced
than any one kind of deformity.