"Others, as common face-painters, and copiers of pictures, denied that there could be such a rule either in art or nature, and asserted it was all stuff and madness; but no wonder that these gentlemen should not be ready in comprehending a thing they have little or no business with. For though the picture-copier may sometimes, to a common eye, seem to vie with the original he copies, the artist himself requires no more ability, genius, or knowledge of nature, than a journeyman weaver at the Gobelins, who in working after a piece of painting, bit by bit, scarcely knows what he is about; whether he is weaving a man or a horse; yet at last, almost insensibly, turns out of his loom a fine piece of tapestry, representing, it may be, one of Alexander's battles painted by Le Brun.
"As the above-mentioned print thus involved me in frequent disputes, by explaining the qualities of the line, I was extremely glad to find it (which I had conceived as only part of a system in my own mind) so well supported by a precept of Michael Angelo, which was first pointed out to me by Dr. Kennedy, a learned antiquarian and connoisseur, of whom I afterwards purchased the translation, from which I have taken several passages to my purpose."[15]
To explain this system, he in 1753 commenced author, and published his Analysis, the professed purpose of which was to fix the fluctuating ideas of taste, by establishing a standard of beauty. This he expected would be considered by his contemporaries, as the ancients considered the little soldier modelled by Policletus, the grammar of proportion, criterion of elegance, and rule of perfection. It must be acknowledged that this was expecting somewhat more than his system deserved; but he received much less. Sheets of good copper were defaced to prove, in the first place, that there was no such line, and in the next, that he had stolen it from the ancients. Some called it the line of deformity, and others the line of drunkenness. By a lady he was more flattered: she told him it was precisely the line which the sun makes in his annual motion round the ecliptic.
His book is divided into chapters, treating of fitness, variety, symmetry, simplicity, intricacy, quantity, lines, forms, composition with the waving line, proportion, light and shade, colouring, attitude, and action. The hypothesis which he endeavours to establish is illustrated by near three hundred explanatory figures, with references to each.
ANALYSIS OF BEAUTY.
PLATE I.
"So vary'd he, and of his tortuous train