Homer? And if it was or is there, why have not others, before and since Phidias, seen it there?

Zeuxis, having made his Helen a complete beauty, we are told that five of the most beautiful women in the city were provided for him. What, if we admit the fact, one of those models the less, or all, or any others in their stead, and would not Helen still have been a finished work? And why have so many other painters before and since Zeuxis, been unable, with the same means, to attain the same beauty? We shall be told that they had not the same genius. What then is a model in reality, if genius be still necessary in order to imitate it? Who shall tell us whether it is the model that causes genius to see the image of the beauty, or that genius sees its own idea in the model?

Well then, that which the genius of the artist seeks for and finds, is nowhere. If you would have proof of this in a fact that cannot be controverted take, for instance, in the imitation of the human body, any model you please. Have the most exact copy taken of it by all the designers in the world. Lo! you will find as many different copies as there are copyists. A certain proof that besides the local and individual model contemplated by all alike, each one has within himself another, which he consults and imitates.

After all then, what is it that is sought after and is found, although it nowhere exists?

It may be, that it is a something whose existence is only immaterial. It may be that it is nothing more than that idea of the true, the beautiful, the befitting, and the perfect, the elements of which nature undoubtedly furnishes for the imitator, but which she cannot present to him realized, as a complete type for imitation, because nature, as we shall hereafter repeat, has made nothing with a view to imitation.

It may be that it is, in every kind of imitation, but the image of a whole, the elements of which genius discovers, combines, arranges, and perfects by study, skill, and observation, according to the purport, and in furtherance of, imitation; that is, with the design of bringing the work to such a degree of generalized perfection on some one point, as to enable it to challenge the individual model in nature.

By one mode then nature is partially imitated, from a model which is every where. Of such the sole result is the pleasure the senses experience from resemblances which are not elevated above the reality of objects. This kind of imitation is that, which to judge, gives the mind the least possible labour, which leaves the imagination idle, in which sentiment has little share, reason little employ, and which has for its admirers, the vulgar

saries of the times. Well! those paintings had not, for contemporaries, and still have not, for us, (setting aside the interest imparted to them by antiquity,) any other value than that appertaining to the repetition of what one sees; they make no other impression than that of a portrait. Nothing more can be expected, and the most lively imagination would in vain seek for any other pleasure, from them. Even subjects of history, either ancient or drawn from a foreign country, personages to whatever age or nation they may be supposed to belong, when subjected to the same local costume, the same reality of portraiture, are insufficient to carry the spectator beyond this limited point of view, and, whatever useful lessons the artist may derive from them, such works leave us devoid of ideas, impressions, images, feelings and desires.

Pass we to the next century and the works of art when fully developed. What a different world do Rafaello and the grand masters of his time open up to us! How many ideas and images that would have been unknown to us, had not imitation attained its aim! What another kind of truth, and in what a different sphere is it revealed to the artist! By how new a manner of viewing nature is her realm enlarged! How much additional food for the imagination, how many new objects for the mind to observe and become acquainted with, and fruitful subjects for taste to criticise! What

as necessarily producing the highest degree of pleasure, and thence, as being the definitive end of imitation, on the other, the superiority we shall be compelled to acknowledge in the pleasure derived from the ideal image, will confirm the truth of the foregoing corollary.

CHAPTER IV.

WHAT IMITATION IT IS, WHOSE MODEL CANNOT BE SHOWN, AND WHAT NAME IS GIVEN TO IT.

The poet, says Plautus, when he sets about composing, seeks what is nowhere, and yet finds it. What does Plautus mean by seeking, and finding what is nowhere?

The answer to this question, contains the element of our theory, concerning what is the end of imitation.

From all that has gone before, there can, I presume, be no question, that to please, and, consequently, to please as much as possible, is the goal to which imitation tends; and that the greatest pleasure cannot be that of the senses, but, on the contrary, that of the mind; in other words, that which the understanding or the imagination procures. Now, as already seen, that which constitutes the object of physical or sensual pleasure, is of a nature to be met with at all times, and in all places, by the organ of the