raordinary swelling and strength of muscles.'

Strength and activity then do not depend on the middle form; and the
middle form is to be sacrificed to the representation of these positive
qualities. Character is thus allowed not only to be an integrant part of
the antique and classical style of art, but even to take precedence of
and set aside the abstract idea of beauty. Little more would be required
to justify Hogarth in his Gothic resolution, that if he were to make
a figure of Charon, he would give him bandy legs, because watermen are
generally bandy-legged. It is very well to talk of the abstract idea
of a man or of a God, but if you come to anything like an intelligible
proposition, you must either individualise and define, or destroy
the very idea you contemplate. Sir Joshua goes into this question at
considerable length in the Third Discourse:

'To the principle I have laid down, that the idea of beauty in each
species of beings is an invariable one, it may be objected,' he says,
'that in every particular species there are various central forms,
which are separate and distinct from each other, and yet are undeniably
beautiful; that in the human figure, for instance the beauty of
Hercules is one, of the Gladiator another, of the Apollo another, which
makes so many different ideas of beauty. It is true, indeed, that these
figures are each perfect in their kind, though of different characters
and proportions; but still none of them is the representation of an
individual, but of a class. And as there is one general form, which,
as I have said, belongs to the human kind at large, so in each of these
classes there is one common idea which is the abstract of the various
individual forms belonging to that class. Thus, though the forms
of childhood and age differ exceedingly, there is a common form in
childhood, and a common form in age, which is the more perfect as it is
remote from all peculiarities. But I must add further, that though the
most perfect forms of each of the general divisions of the human figure
are ideal, and superior to any individual form of that class, yet the
highest perfection of the human figure is not to be found in any of
them. It is not in the Hercules, nor in the Gladiator, nor in the
Apollo; but in that form which is taken from all, and which partakes
equally of the activity of the Gladiator, of the delicacy of the Apollo,
and of the muscular strength of the Hercules. For perfect beauty in
a