I am of a very different opinion, for I think, that, on the
contrary, we should then see dignified beauty, and true grace; to
produce which, many powerful physical and moral causes would
concur. Not relaxed beauty, it is true, nor the graces of
helplessness; but such as appears to make us respect the human body
as a majestic pile, fit to receive a noble inhabitant, in the
relics of antiquity.
I do not forget the popular opinion, that the Grecian statues were
not modelled after nature. I mean, not according to the
proportions of a particular man; but that beautiful limbs and
features were selected from various bodies to form an harmonious
whole. This might, in some degree, be true. The fine ideal
picture of an exalted imagination might be superior to the
materials which the painter found in nature, and thus it might with
propriety be termed rather the model of mankind than of a man. It
was not, however, the mechanical selection of limbs and features,
but the ebullition of an heated fancy that burst forth; and the
fine senses and enlarged understanding of the artist selected the
solid matter, which he drew into this glowing focus.
I observed that it was not mechanical, because a whole was
produced--a model of that grand simplicity, of those concurring
energies, which arrest our attention and command our reverence.
For only insipid lifeless beauty is produced by a servile copy of
even beautiful nature.
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