have introduced some special
consideration of the science of anatomy, which I believe to have
been in great part the cause of the decline of modern art; but I
have been anticipated by a writer better able to treat the subject.
I have only glanced at his book; and there is something in the
spirit of it which I do not like, and some parts of it are assuredly
wrong; but, respecting anatomy, it seems to me to settle the
question indisputably, more especially as being written by a master
of the science. I quote two passages, and must refer the reader to
the sequel.

"_The scientific men of forty centuries_ have failed to describe so
accurately, so beautifully, so artistically, as Homer did, the
organic elements constituting the emblems of youth and beauty, and
the waste and decay which these sustain by time and age. All these
Homer understood better, and has described more truthfully than the
scientific men of forty centuries....

"Before I approach this question, permit me to make a few remarks on
the pre-historic period of Greece; that era which seems to have
produced nearly all the great men.

"On looking attentively at the statues within my observation, I
cannot find the slightest foundation for the assertion that their
sculptors must have dissected the human frame and been well
acquainted with the human anatomy. They, like Homer, had discovered
Nature's secret, and bestowed their whole attention on the exterior.
The exterior they read profoundly, and studied deeply--the _living
exterior_ and the _dead_. Above all, they avoided displaying the
dead and dissected interior, through the exterior. They had
discovered that the interior presents hideous shapes, but not forms.
Men during the philosophic era of Greece saw all this, each reading
the antique to the best of his abilities. The man of genius
rediscovered the canon of the ancient masters, and wrought on its
principles. The greater number, as now, unequal to this step, merely
imitated and copied those who preceded them."--_Great Artists and
Great Anatomists_. By R. Knox, M.D. London, Van Voorst, 1852.

Respecting the value of literary knowledge in general as regards
art, the reader will also do well to meditate on the following
sentences from Hallam's "Literature of Europe;" remembering at the
same time what I have abov