THE IDEAL
Another of the Specimens of a Dictionary of Definitions, from The Atlas, January 10, 1830.
429. In Hazlitt’s Criticisms on Art, edited by his son, the following passages are inserted in the reprint of The Atlas article, presumably from Hazlitt’s MS.:
After power without effort, add: ‘It is the most exalted idea we can form of humanity. Some persons have hence raised it quite above humanity, and made its essence to consist specifically in the representation of gods and goddesses, just as if, on the same principle that there are court painters, there were certain artists who had the privilege of being admitted into the mythological heaven, and brought away casts and fac-similes of the mouth of Venus or the beard of Jupiter.’
After in every part, beautiful, add: ‘The Venus is only the idea of the most perfect female beauty, and the statue will be none the worse for bearing the more modern name of Musidora. The ideal is only making the best of what is natural and subject to the sense.’
[430]. Severe in youthful beauty. Paradise Lost, IV. 845.
Inimitable on earth. Ibid., III. 508.
After contradiction in terms, add: ‘Besides, it might be objected captiously that what is strictly common to all is necessarily to be found exemplified in each individual.’
[431]. Till our content is absolute. Othello, Act II. Sc. 1.
Know, virtue were not virtue.
‘Nor should the change be mourned, even if the joys
Of sense were able to return as fast,’ etc.
Laodamia.
[432]. Patient Grizzle. The Clerke’s Tale.
[433]. The human and the brute. The two paragraphs that follow do not appear in The Atlas, but have been added to the Essay from the source mentioned above.
[434]. To o’erstep the modesty of nature. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.