I mean that beauty which is demonstrable truth, and that truth which
is demonstrable beauty. _Exactitude. Completion. The just medium. The
satisfactory rest of the mind. Perfection_. A point, indeed, in which
the mind cannot rest! It must go forward or backward. If the latter,
it relapses into the dominion of error; if the former, if assumes
the charms of _design_, or _intention_. The artist, arrived at the
ultimate limit of rules, or demonstrable truth, stands, as it were,
between the visible and invisible world; between that of sense and
intellect; the common and the uncommon; and his productions will be a
conjunction of both. He looks back through all the variety of common
nature, and reviews, through the medium of truth and beauty, the
various objects it exhibits; and on its spotless ground, i.e. the
abstract idea of nature without defects, can only exist in idea,
he arranges those objects, objects, so as they may best produce the
effects he aims at in his art. He does not attempt to obliterate
any character in the common circle of nature; but, following her
own oeconomy, he endeavours, by juxtaposition, &c. to make each
subservient to each in creating delight, and giving beauty to the
_whole_. But, to descend from the abstract general idea to the
particular idea of beauty, or idea of a particular form:
We discard every thing, that is not beauty, to compose beauty; but
every thing that is not beauty is not therefore deformity. The wrong
we see in each individual we do not call deformity: when it is so, it
stands on the limit of the common circle, in opposition to beauty.
From common form seem to originate beauty and deformity; and, as they
recede from each other in opposite directions, they become less and
less like their parent, _common form_, but never totally unlike; for
it is their likeness to that form that constitutes the one beauty, and
the other deformity; for, were there no resemblance in deformity
to the common form, it would be a different species, and no longer
disgust; and none in beauty, it would no longer please.
There is no particular common form, but which, to create beauty, an
artist, who studies the perfection of the human form, must improve in
some, if not in every part; to effect which, considered as mere form
only, rules will suffice, but, considered as grace, it must express a
sentiment that no rules can give!
That all feel the same sentiment of admiration for that which they
think the most perfect, however the objects may differ, has induced
some to believe that beauty is an arbitrary idea, and that it exists
only in the imagination! But does it follow, that, because it is not
possible for the savage or the man of taste to judge of any object
but as experience enables him to judge, that therefore there is no
preeminence in that form which is beauty to the one above that which
is beauty to the other?
Somewhere there must exist, whether perceived or not, the perfection,
or highest point of excellence of the human form respecting
proportion; and somewhere there must exist, or does at times exist,
the highest excellence of its expression, i.e. the moral charm of the
human countenance, _grace_.
The artist, who has only seen the beauty of his own nation, will from
that form his standard of perfection. But, when he comes to extend his
enquiry, when he has viewed the beauty of other nations, particularly
that form and that expression which the Grecian artists (who were
probably on a line with the Grecian philosophers) modelled from their
ideas of beauty! he will quit his partiality for the beauty of his own
country, and prefer that of the Grecian, which I imagine is preferable
to that of the whole world! The only criterion to prove it so, I mean
its form, would be to select from every nation the most perfect in it,
and from that number to choose the most perfect, were this possible
to be done, respecting the external form of beauty: it could not
respecting the internal expression of beauty, _grace_; for who shall
be the world's arbiter of the ne plus ultra of grace!
That the artists of all ages and of all nations have terminated their
enquiries after beauty in that of the Grecian form is the highest
proof that can be given of its superior excellence to that of all the
world!
Common form, as I have observed before, is so much nearer beauty than
deformity, that it is, in abstract idea, the model to compose beauty
of form from. The _universal_ appearance of nature is, to every eye,
right, fit, faultless, &c. therefore, if every part of the copy be the
same, particularly, I mean, in the _human_ form, beauty of form must
result.
The beauty of every part of the human body, forming a _perfect_ whole,
is analogous to an instrument of music in perfect concord, and mere
exactitude of proportion in its parts, exclusive of the idea of mind,
would, I imagine, have no more effect upon the spectator than the mere
concord of the strings of an instrument has on the hearer; it amounts
to no more than blameless right, nor, till influenced by sentiment,
can it go farther.
But, as we are incapable of separating the idea of the human form from
the human mind, and as the touch of an instrument in perfect concord
gives a presentiment of harmony, so does the perception of the
concordance of the parts of a beautiful form give a perception of
grace. The mind, as I have observed before, cannot rest in fixed
perfection, the _Spotless white_; and its natural transition from
beauty must be into the region of grace.