details of this want of symmetry and regularity further than to the features of the face; though to make the figure consistent and complete, the same happy mixture of the irregular and picturesque must have prevailed through her limbs and person; and consequently she must have hobbled as well as squinted; and had hips and shoulders as irregular as her teeth, cheeks, and eyebrows. All my friend's parental fondness for his system is certainly necessary to make him think such an assemblage of picturesque circumstances either lovely or attractive; or induce him to imagine, that he should be content with such a creature, as if I were of the cloth, I should like very well to take the living, the house, and its inhabitant." Dialog. p. 135.— "Here is a house and a woman without symmetry or beauty; and yet many might prefer them both to such as had infinitely more of what they and the world would acknowledge to be regularly beautiful." Ib. p. 136. It is presumed that, by symmetry, conformity is here meant for symmetry is the mutual proportion of commensurate parts;, and in all animals nature has fixt certain relative proportions for each kind and species, according to the perfection or imperfection of which, each individual of that kind or species is more or less perfect but an individual wholly without such proportion, that is, without symmetry, can only be a monster. A building, indeed, being a work of mere art and invention, can have no natural proportions; and may therefore, as before observed, be rendered pleasing, both to the eye and imagination, by contrast, without sym, metry in its correlative parts. CHAP. Of Imagina tion. CHAP, II. Of Imagina tion. a companion for life; and I heartily congratúlate him that this fondness did not arise at an earlier period, to obstruct him in a very different choice, Indeed, he seems to have still some remains of his former prejudices lurking about him: for he soon after uses the epithets beautiful and lovely, as synonymous; and defines the one by the other, in spite of all his philosophy of the picturesque *. so. This philosophy has, I confess, long puzzled me, in spite of the many discussions, which we have had to explain it. A single sentence, however, in his last publication, has given me a complete key to it. "All these ideas," says an interlocutor, who, on this occasion, sustains his own part in his dialogue, are originally acquired by the touch; but from use they are become as much objects of sight as colours t." When there is so little discrimination between the operations of mind and the objects of sense, that ideas become objects of sight, all the rest follows of course; and the different classes of beauty may be divided into as many distinct characters, as there are distinct ideas; and be still progressively augmented with the augmentation of science, and extension of art. Beauty may "The most beautiful, that is, the most lovely." Dialog. p. 149. ↑ Dialog. p. 107. CHAP. II. tion. also, in one page, be synonymous with lovelinesss; and yet, in another, loveliness may Of Imaginaexist without beauty or symmetry, by means of certain qualities, which are analogous to beauty; such as a clear skin, and clean white teeth *. These, however, in every other part of the work, are considered as real and positive beauties, not depending upon habit, as Sir Joshua Reynolds has supposed them to be; and as the facts, before cited, prove them to bet. When a squinting woman, however, without symmetry or beauty, was to be invested with a sufficient portion of sexual charms to render her capable of exciting affection and desire, those charms suddenly become qualities analogous to beauty; and, in this disguised and undefinable form, are slipped into a composition, with which they would otherwise have been found incompatible. 81. I do not mean, however, to deny that a woman, with even greater personal defects than either hobbling or squinting, may, by the influence of sexual and social sympathies, be Dialog. p. 107. Essays, vol.i. p. 126, &c. In all these passages, my friend equally mistakes ideas for things; and the effects of internal sympathies, for those of external circumstances; as he does through both his preceding volumes; and thence grounds the best practical lessons of taste upon false principles, and false philosophy. ↑ See Part I. c. iii. f. 4. and c. v. f. 24. CHAP. Of Imagina- * extremely interesting and attractive. The lovely and amiable Duchess of La Valiere is said, not only to have had bad teeth, but also, in consequence of an accident in her 'childhood, to have limped or hobbled in her gait; which, nevertheless, seemed to add to, rather than take away from the graces of her person Probably, however, it seemed so only to those, who, like her royal lover, were predisposed, by the influence of those graces, to approve every thing that she did: for this passion of love, how blind soever it may be, can at all times discover charms and graces, where ordinary discernment can only see faults and defects. Imitative art separates these faults and defects from the magic, which recommends them in real life: for figures in stone or on canvass, excite too little either of social or sexual sympathy to engage the feelings of the man in support of the theories of the philosopher. The irregular movements of *" Elle boitoit un peu, mais il sembloit, qu'au lieu de huire, ce defaut ajoutoit à ses grâces."-Fragm. de Lett. de Madame, &c. "Illuc prævertamur, amatorem quod amicæ Turpia decipiunt cæcum vitia, aut etiam ipsa hæc HORAT. Serm. 1. i. f. iii. v. 38. η γαρ εξωτι πολλακις, ω Πολύφαμε, τα μη καλα καλα πεφανται. THEOCRIT. Idyl. vi. 18. 1 the monarch's lovely mistress, or the irregular CHAP. II. looks of the parson's blooming daughter, may Of Imagina have been very charming to those, who were predisposed by other charming qualities of tint, form, or expression, to be pleased with them; and as these irregular charms belong neither to the sublime nor the beautiful, my friend, consistently with his system, seeks for them in his general intermediate repository of the picturesque; though they are not at all after the manner of painting. Other philosophers have sought for them in the minds of the spectators, where, I believe, all the charm will ultimately be found. But, though all these distinctions be but mental or ideal modifications for different classes of visible objects, which cannot be classed by any characteristic distinctions inherent in themselves, I am not aware that any thing, that I have ever written or said on the subject, can fairly be construed to imply that I ever considered the words beautiful and picturesque to be synonymous or convertible terms, as has been supposed. In the "Essays on the Picturesque," indeed, it is merely stated that there are persons, who, in reality, hold the two words to be synonymous; though they do not say so in express terms; and others, who allow that the words have a different meaning, but that there is no distinct character of the tion. |