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Akenside, Mark, 1721-1770

"Poetical Works of Akenside"

And upon this supposition,
by that truth which is always connected with beauty, nothing more
can be meant than the conformity of any object to those proportions
upon which, after careful examination, the beauty of that species is
found to depend. Polycletus, for instance, a famous ancient sculptor,
from an accurate mensuration of the several parts of the most perfect
human bodies, deduced a canon or system of proportions, which was
the rule of all succeeding artists. Suppose a statue modelled
according to this: a man of mere natural taste, upon looking at it,
without entering into its proportions, confesses and admires its
beauty; whereas a professor of the art applies his measures to the
head, the neck, or the hand, and, without attending to its beauty,
pronounces the workmanship to be just and true.
[Footnote 1: This the Athenians did in a peculiar manner, by the
words [Greek: kalokagathus] and [Greek: kalokagathia].]

ENDNOTE G.
'_As when Brutus rose_,' etc.--P. 18.
Cicero himself describes this fact--'Cassare interfecto--statim
cruentum alte extollens M. Brutus pugionem, Ciceronem nominatim
exclamavit, atque ei recuperatam libertatem est gratulatus.


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