Dissertation on the Progress of the Fine Arts Part 1

Dissertation on the Progress of the Fine Arts.

by John Robert Scott.

INTRODUCTION

Scott's "Dissertation on the Progress of the Fine Arts" embodies what we can now see as a final development in his century's deep concern to understand why what it so often admitted was the greatest art had somehow not been forthcoming in what it as often claimed was the greatest century. The "Dissertation" is in no way an original work; rather--and this is its primary value for us--its author takes a belief which his culture has given him and, like others before him, tries to clarify one of its implications. The belief is in the idea of a universal progress marred, if it in the end can be said to be marred, only by an esthetic primitivism; the implication is that that esthetic primitivism can be not only comprehended but surmounted. Scott accepts the century's commonplace that art of power and significance has been necessarily produced only in societies markedly simpler than his own; and he accepts too the fact (for such it was when men believed in it and judged according to the principles generated by it) that in all forms of culture excepting art, his own richly complex society has produced something far surpa.s.sing anything produced in the "simpler" society of cla.s.sical Greece or of the Italian Renaissance. Scott's uniqueness is that, unlike those of his predecessors who had worked with the same belief, he does not try to establish an historical rationale for this _status quo_. He goes so far as to envisage--perhaps it would be truer to his state of mind to say posit--an enlightened modern society which will at once remain what it is and yet so change itself as to make possible the production of major art.

The main interest for us in the "Dissertation," then, lies in Scott's notions of the kind of society needed to produce major art, and beyond that, in what is entailed in holding fast to that notion, developing it into a doctrine, and even hoping to make it a reality in his own time.

He outlines the doctrine in great detail, simply by describing what he takes to be the sociocultural situation of the cla.s.sical Greek artist (and incidentally, that of the artist of the Italian Renaissance). He chooses to write almost entirely of the fine arts (for him in this case, sculpture), although he conceives, as the student of his age would expect him to, that what holds for the fine arts will also hold for poetry. In the immediacy of appeal of sculpture, he finds a quality which, when its working and expression are a.n.a.lysed, will let him see just how the artist and his work have been ideally related to the society in which they have flourished.

Scott's description of the artist and his place in Greek society is one which, in general, is familiar to students of eighteenth-century critical theory. Equally familiar is his concern to establish the fact that, as he puts it, "the connate temper of the times" made possible the production of great art. He sees Greek art as being authentically marked by the "rich raciness of the native soil." And he sees Greek society as in all departments making the work of the artist possible. In small, free, uncentralized states; in states where art has a public, memorial function; in states where, because so many games and rituals are performed naked, the artist is always directly and overwhelmingly aware of the possibility of beauty in the human body--in such states, owing to such "natural causes," art must necessarily flourish. Above all, art is of the people and their artists as they form a vital community; it is not borrowed; it is fresh and original. Finally, such a cultural situation, and therefore such an art, is found obviously to be lacking in his own time.

Now this argument, carried up to this point, had been more or less held to by many critics and literary theorists before Scott.[1] True enough, they had mainly concerned themselves with poetry; yet they found the source of major poetry to be ultimately in a nakedness of language--made possible by what was taken to be the simplicity, spontaneity, and cohesion of Greek life--comparable to Scott's notion of nakedness of body. They differ from Scott in this: that almost uniformly, so far as my reading goes, all had been willing to admit that there was absolutely no hope for comparable artistic achievement in their own time; that such art could be produced only in simpler, earlier societies than their own; that, indeed, a characteristic of a mature society was that it had grown up beyond the young, crude, exuberant stage in which conditions were ideal for the cultivation of the esthetic sensibilities. The ideal time for the production of major art, they tended to conclude, was at that point in the history of a society when it was moving from the savage into the civilized. They were thus not absolute esthetic primitivists; but they were concerned nonetheless to tie art to its primitive origins, as for the most part they were concerned equally to celebrate their triumph over the limitations of such origins. So, to take one example, Thomas Blackwell, meditating Homer's achievement in his _Enquiry_, had written in 1735 that it does not "seem to be given to one and the same Kingdom, to be thoroughly civilized, and afford proper Subjects for Poetry"; and in the same work he later declared that he hoped "_That we may never be a proper Subject of an Heroic Poem_." Only by being a "Subject" for a heroic poem could the poet write one; for only then would he have available to him the living language--and thus the techniques--adequately to express that "Subject." This was to be a dominant refrain--matched, to be sure, by a counter-refrain, treatment of which is not immediately relevant here[2]--through the century. A significant number of critics and literary theorists would be willing to resign themselves to having a lesser art, if such resignation would mean that they could adequately celebrate the enlightened achievements of their own century. They worked out a method of historical a.n.a.lysis whereby they might construct "conjectural histories" of civilization which would allow them to place poetry and the fine arts in the long line of the evolution of culture toward their own time and to demonstrate, moreover, that even as the arts had come early, so philosophy, proper religion, the sciences, and all the highest forms of civilization had come late. Thus they could announce triumphantly that if they had lost something, they had gained much more.

But still the greatness of the art which they did not have moved and attracted them. Their work is perhaps a measure of their attempts to rationalize out of existence a longing for the art which they felt their time was not giving them. Perhaps that is why Scott, in the 1790's--his mind, so it seems to us, not only informed but made by the critical formulae of his time--tried to face squarely up to the fact that somehow greet art had to be made possible for even his enlightened century. Yet his mind was so simple and simplifying that he thought that merely by denying his predecessors carefully worked out conjecture of the necessary connection between an "early" society and great art, he could prove that such was possible in his time. For the artist envisaged in the "Dissertation" is still, in spite of his obvious attempts to have it otherwise, the artist as conceived of by Blackwell and the rest of Scott's predecessors. Scott glories in the civilized achievements of his own age, yet somehow hopes that the same "liberal public encouragement"

that obtained in Greece will come again and make for such labor, pains, and study as will create in England art as great as Greece's. Such a condition, he feels, is not impossible; yet he says nothing of the kind of social structure and character which he has already shown to be requisite to the development of "liberal public encouragement." The argument, such as it is, is left hanging. That is to say, there is no evidence in the essay that Scott could really think through to the possibility of the major artist's being immediately present in an eighteenth-century society re-made, so far as its artistic life was concerned, in a primitivistic pattern. He remains purely a theoretical possibility in Scott's scheme of things, as does the society in which he might flourish.

Likewise, in the other essays[3] which Scott collected and published along with the "Dissertation," there is no evidence that he really understood what was involved in taking the stand he did. In the most interesting of these pieces, "An Essay on the Influence of Taste on Morals," he denies the existence of a Hutchesonian moral sense, absolutely separates esthetic taste from morals, holds that art will have an influence toward immorality unless it is kept in check with a moral system properly inculcated by revealed religion. What he is entirely unaware of is the possible radical implications of such a separation of art and morality. As in the "Dissertation," he accepts a conventional notion and is satisfied to push it as far as he can, never exploring its possible ambiguities.

The ambiguities are those, of course, which led to that transformation of critical theory and artistic practice which we a.s.sociate with the romantic movement. In this light, it is interesting to note that just fourteen years after the first publication of the "Dissertation" William Hazlitt could take a stand almost identical in gross characteristics with that of Scott and the others--this in his "Why the Arts are Not Progressive."[4] For Hazlitt, because "the arts unlike the sciences and the forms of high civilization in general hold immediate communication with nature," they develop best soon after their "birth" and thrive "in a state of society which [is], in other respects, comparatively barbarous." He goes so far as to instance Homer, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Dante, Ariosto, Raphael, t.i.tian, Michaelangelo, Correggio, Cervantes, and Boccaccio. In all its extremity, in its inclusive view of what const.i.tutes a barbarous society and its peculiar cultural virtues, this is but the conventional doctrine of Scott and all those who came before him. But it is, in Hazlitt, transformed into a statement, not, as in Scott's predecessors, of a rationale for the weakness of art in their time, nor, as in Scott himself, of a dimly espoused hope of art in his time. It becomes a frank, "sympathetic"

statement of a fact of life which, when granted, will enable men to enjoy and comprehend great art of all ages. The doctrine is focussed on the work of art, not on the culture which lacks it; it has been crucially transformed from a historical into a heuristic principle.

Scott's "Dissertation" embodies the doctrine just before its transformation--a neocla.s.sical strain, we can say, just before it had became a romantic strain. Scott almost takes his stand with Hazlitt; but he is not quite there. And not being quite there, he is a whole world away.

Roy Harvey Pearce Ohio State University

NOTES

[Footnote 1: Among the works that I have seen which specifically develop this argument are: Thomas Blackwell, _An Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer_ (1735); Richard Hurd, _The Third [Elizabethan]

Dialogue_ (1759) and _Letters on Chivalry and Romance_ (1762); John Ogilvie, "An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients," in _Poems on Several Subjects_ (1762); John Brown, _A Dissertation of the Rise, Union, and Power, the Progressions, Separations, and Corruptions of Poetry and Music_ (1763) and a shorter version of the _Dissertation, The History of the Rise and Progress of Poetry_ (1764); Hugh Blair, _A Critical Dissertation on the Poems_ of Ossian (1763); William Duff, _An Essay on Original Genius_ (1767); Robert Wood, _An Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer_ (1767, enlarged version 1769); Thomas Pownall, _A Treatise on the Study of Antiquities_ (1782). Such a list, however, if it were to indicate the scope and ramifications of the argument would have to be expanded to include more general eighteenth-century studies of the evolution of cultural forms; for the argument on the nature of art and its relation to "primitive" societies is part of a larger one centering on the whole idea of progress.

Treatment of the whole subject has never been fully integrated into a study of the nature (or natures) of eighteenth-century criticism and critical theory--although a start has been made on study of it in and of itself. The basic treatment remains Lois Whitney's _Primitivism and the Idea of Progress_ (Baltimore, 1934) and her two essays "English Primitivistic Theories of Epic Origins," _MP_, XXI (1924), 337-378 and "Thomas Blackwell, a Disciple of Shaftesbury," _PQ_, _V_ (1926), 196-211. These are to be considerably qualified in their general, sociological orientation by Gladys Bryson's _Man and Society: The Scottish Inquiry of the Eighteenth Century_ (Princeton, 1945). They are further to be qualified in their literary-critical orientation by my "The Eighteenth-Century Scottish Primitivists: Some Reconsiderations,"

_ELH_, XII (1945), 203-220, which is in turn somewhat expanded upon and generalized in the appendix to Ernest Tuveson's _Millenium and Utopia: A Study in the Background of the Idea of Progress_ (Berkeley, 1949).]

[Footnote 2: See, for example, Donald Foerster, "Scottish Primitivism and the Historical Approach," _PQ_, XXIX (1950), 307-323.]

[Footnote 3: The essay was republished in 1804 as part of Scott's _Dissertations, Essays, and Parallels_. These pieces range from college premium compositions of the 1770's to the "Dissertation" of 1800.]

[Footnote 4: The essay is handily available in W. J. Bate's anthology, _Criticism: The Major Texts_ (New York, 1952), pp. 292-295.]

PREFACE.

Most of the following compositions were written several years ago, when the Author was a student in the distinguished University of Dublin; whose acknowledged excellence in cla.s.sical literature, and in every branch of scientific learning, needs not the celebration of his feeble praise: and by it the first and second Dissertations, and one of the Essays, were honoured with the first literary rewards in the power of that learned body to bestow. Written at first with an honest desire of acquiring fair reputation by praise-worthy exertions, they are now submitted to the public eye from a wish to contribute to the liberal amus.e.m.e.nt, and perhaps to the improvement, of the minds of his fellow-creatures; with all the natural anxieties of an author addressing a public, to whom he is little known; but without any unmanly dread or humiliating deprecation of just and candid criticism.

Should they drop still-born from the press, as it may be has been the fate of as meritorious compositions, the author (as becomes him) will submit without murmuring to the general verdict. Should they, on the contrary, be graced with a favourable reception, he shall deem himself honoured by such notice; and will endeavour to render some larger works of his, shortly to be submitted to the same respectable tribunal, as worthy as his abilities will permit of its approving judgment.

Gloucester Street, Queen Square, 1804.

A DISSERTATION, &c.

The natural feelings of man, when he enters into society with his fellow-creatures, first induce him to improve by the means thence acquired the arts necessary to his existence and well-being: whose want he every day felt in his separate and detached state, and for whose melioration he has just reason to hope from the union of combined force, and from the co-operation of confederated talents. Presst incessantly by the demands for the sustenance of animal life, to supply them plentifully is not only his first care, but also that of the community with which he has a.s.sociated, if it is even one degree removed from the savage state: and hence, in this early period of growing civilization, the tending of flocks and the tilling of fields, Pasturage and Agriculture, are deemed not only necessary but honourable occupations; the simplicity of untutored man ever leading him to estimate that to be most laudable which he finds to be most useful. These being advanced to a certain degree of excellence, which, though far inferior to what they are obviously capable of attaining, is yet sufficient not only for the comfortable but for the indulgent enjoyment of life, new desires arise, new wants spring up; and their gratification is pursued with an eagerness correspondent to the novelty of their origin, and the untried force of their impression. The cravings of our animal nature being amply provided for by the ingenuity of the inhabitants, by the fertility of the soil, or by the conjoint operation of both, the imagination begins in the luxuriance of abundance to picture to itself new sources of delight, and spurning, not without some contempt, the mere provision for existence, to fancy ideal pleasures, and to search out with anxious care and laboured pains those objects which may gratify them. And man, finding himself possessed of more than a sufficiency to supply all his wants, is willingly inclined to impart some share of that redundance to those who will contribute to his convenience and satisfaction; to those who will render his comforts at all times more comfortable, who will relieve the languors of his la.s.situde, and fill up the vacuities of his leisure with amus.e.m.e.nt. As there always were some to whom labour had no charms, other more agreeable means of acquiring support were quickly sought out, and the inventive powers of the mind were stretched to form those imagined pleasures whose want was felt, and whose reward was ready.

Hence Architecture, Painting, and Statuary, (with strict propriety denominated the fine arts) primarily arose; hence they derived their most a.s.siduous cultivation, and hence the utmost perfection to which they have yet attained. Unsatisfied with the hut that merely protected from the inclemencies of the elements, and, in the moments of repose, from the unwarned attacks of the savages of the forest, man soon sought out for more permanent, more pleasing habitations: to which experience first joined increased conveniences, and then his inventive faculties, sometimes aided by fortunate chance, sometimes led on by correct fancy, added those ornaments that have stood the test of ages, and fixed those proportions that have uniformly approved themselves to all the judicious through the revolving course of various centuries. The ingenuity of love taught the fair nymph to portray the shadow of that favoured youth whose merits had won her heart, that even in his absence she might feast her mind with beholding some similitude of his form: and hence the imagination, impregnated by the nascent thought, conceived those possibilities of excellence in painting, and that source of intellectual enjoyment thence arising, which Zeuxis and Parrhasius exhibited to the admiring eyes of Greece, and which Raphael and Michael Angelo have displayed to the enraptured contemplation of the modern world.

Poetry, it is true, early indeed enabled mankind, by the fascinating power of its melodious sounds and its persuasive numbers, to "raise monuments[e] more durable than bra.s.s," and to consecrate to immortality those ill.u.s.trious persons who had ent.i.tled themselves to lasting fame by their deserts. But, even long antecedent to that period, the desire of having some representative form of reverenced or beloved individuals had taught men to make some likenesses of them in rude sculptures of stone or ivory: though dest.i.tute of the advantage of colouring, yet more impressively striking to the senses than the productions of painting, had they then existed (which may be doubted), and, from the nature of their materials, less liable to the injuries of the weather. These, we acknowledge, were cold, inanimate, and dest.i.tute of all appearance of motion; till Daedalus contrived to give expression to the countenance and action to the limbs; on which succeeding artists improving, each rivalling and then surpa.s.sing his predecessor, at length produced those "works to wonder at," the exquisite, the unmatched, the divine dignity of the Apollo Belvedere, the energy, the athletic force of the Borghese combatant, the agonized expression of the Laoc.o.o.n, and the tearful sorrows of the Niobe.

[Footnote e: Exegi monumentum aere perennius. Horatii Carmi. Lib. iii.

Ode 30.]

The expectations formed of the enjoyments to be derived from the masterly productions of these Arts have in no one instance been disappointed; but, we may a.s.sert without fear of contradiction, have in every case been greatly exceeded: for though the emanations of the arts, with the single exception of the Apollo Belvedere, may have fallen short of that ideal excellence which forms their standard in each duly cultivated mind, as, in the department of literature, the great Roman orator states to have been the case with his own admirable compositions, they have yet confessedly arrived at a degree of beauty, a splendor of effect, and a power of impression, hardly to be hoped, and not easily to be conceived.

Should it then be demanded, what causes produced this transcendent beauty, this unrivalled grace, this combination of pleasing form and perfect utility? They will be found, not in any fortuitous concurrence of accidents, not in any benign aspect of the planets, not in any genial influence of the atmosphere, as has been weakly imagined and absurdly a.s.serted by certain self-denominated Philosophers of the continent; but to have been the effects of much labour and much pains, of much study and much industry, of great national encouragement, and of the peculiar situation of that fortunate land wherein they were advanced from their salient principle to their matured perfection.

To confine ourselves to Greece, with which and its history, by means of its incomparable writers, we are best acquainted: the first striking circ.u.mstance in their favour was, that in it they were not borrowed, nor imported, nor caused by foreign imitation, but were the home-bred produce of the country; and therefore, however cultivated and improved, always retained the rich raciness of a native soil. Successive generations of artists arose, each excelling the other in merit, and each of these had a correspondent race of their countrymen ready to admire, and prepared to applaud them. No fastidious delicacy, no affected superiority of discernment or skill, repressed their talents, or curbed their genius: but free scope was given to the boldest of their flights, and, when they happened to succeed, the praise of their own age was their sure and adequate reward. The productions of the earlier periods would not have, indeed, pleased in the polished age of Pericles, unless as ill.u.s.trative of the progress of the arts; for then more captivating models were every day produced, more enchanting examples were every day exhibited to the view. But in their own age, and their own time, being superior to all that had been seen before, they were thought matchless performances, and so received with undisputed plaudits the highest estimation. This connate temper of the times (if I may use the expression) proved a most powerful incentive to the abilities of the artists, and ensured to them, if surpa.s.sing in merit their predecessors, honourable regard, and that fame[f] which above all other considerations was dear to a Grecian heart. Hence labour and pains, a.s.siduity and exertion, were unremittingly applied to advance their peculiar art, to smooth its asperities, to ornament its nakedness, to improve whatever of excellent existed in it, and to aim at still farther capabilities of excellence. Certain of the approbation of their contemporaries, repressed by no ideas of unattainable perfection, which were the growth of latter times and of the greatest refinement, they daily added something to the common stock; and though that something was in itself, perhaps, inconsiderable, it yet raised its possessor to no common degree of celebrity. Thus the arts advanced, proceeding from strength to strength, constantly receiving accessions of improvement, which were favoured by many conspiring, and r.e.t.a.r.ded by no unpropitious circ.u.mstances: and, being native to the country, the abilities of the artists in a great measure formed the taste of the age, as its fostering admiration const.i.tuted their most flattering reward.

[Footnote f: Praeter laudem nullius avaris. Horatius De Arte Poetica.]

From a situation perfectly dissimilar, though the Romans long and sedulously cultivated the arts, yet their n.o.blest efforts never equalled the best works of the Grecian school; of which the sacred remnants still remain unrivalled and unmatched. For amongst them they were not indigenous, but introduced as it were by violence; by the power of the conquering sword, and by the plundering of insatiable rapacity: each of the Roman generals, however ignorant or unpolished himself, yet pillaging vanquished Greece of the choicest works of her happier days.

Thus, indeed, exquisite models and patterns of consummate beauty were procured for the rustic Latians,[g] on which they wrought with a.s.siduity, and attempted to emulate: but their redundancy was rather oppressive than co-operative, and their very perfection tended to prevent an encouraging esteem of the rising artists. For the judgment, or what we call the Taste, of the public being formed not gradually, and by progressive steps of improving art, but all at once, and (as it were) at a bound, a.s.sumed a squeamish delicacy which nothing imperfect would please, and which delighted more in finding faults than in discovering beauties. And this cause, whose operation is alike powerful and general, contributed more to keep down the Roman arts, and to prevent them from equalling the Greek, than any inferiority of talents, or than any want of continued application and culture.

[Footnote g:

- - - - - - artes Intulit agresti Latio. Horatii Epis. Lib. ii. Ep. 1.]

The case has been the same in the modern world, and it will be found universally true, that where the arts have arisen from natural, or nearly natural causes, and have thence proceeded by gradual advances to higher degrees of perfection, the judgment or taste of the nation similarly meliorating with their improvement, they have attained, and will attain, the utmost excellence which the abilities of the artists can give them: but when brought forward among a people by extraneous circ.u.mstances, such as the force of conquests, the commanding influence of supreme power, or the efforts of affected imitation, though they may bloom and flourish for a season, that they never will arrive at that richness of maturity they have been seen to possess elsewhere, nor will enjoy that vigour of growth which native juices infuse; but, like hothouse plants, though fairly seeming, are yet vapid to the sense, and when bereft of their borrowed heat, quickly sink, rot, and die.

The progress of the arts in the ancient world, with the astonis.h.i.+ng excellence to which they were carried, was also much aided by the manners and customs there prevailing, and in constant and daily practice. To games and vigorous exercises the ancients were remarkably addicted, regarding them both as liberal amus.e.m.e.nts and as a preparatory discipline for the active occupations of war, in which each freeman of the state knew himself obliged to engage at a certain period of his life, and which he could not avoid without being d.a.m.ned to never-ceasing infamy. Now all these were performed _naked_, as well on account of the warmth of the atmosphere as to preclude all unequal advantages, and to habituate the mind fearlessly to expose the person to the a.s.saults of inc.u.mbent danger. Hence the human figure was hourly exhibited to the inspecting view of the attentive beholder, whether sculptor or painter, in all its various forms of grace and elegance, of strength and force, or of agony and torture: and these not the a.s.sumed appearances of fict.i.tious feeling, but the vivid effects of actual endurance, and glowing from the mint of present impression. These were not to be sought in Schools and Academies, they were not the lifeless colourings of mercenary hirelings, but the energies of men emulous of fame, and conscious that their characters with their countrymen would be materially influenced by their performances in these favourite contests.

Contests which as amus.e.m.e.nts were the delight of all, which as exercises were the duty of mult.i.tudes; which h.o.a.ry age beheld with rapture, as recalling the remembrance of the days of their prime, and which unfledged youth gazed on with transport, as picturing those deeds whereby they panted soon to be distinguished. Thus nothing but the most careless inattention could avoid noting the distinctive marks of the various pa.s.sions and affections, which nature writes in very legible characters: and as all from repeated observation were equally well acquainted with them, in their representation by the artist nothing short of the most exact and accurate likeness could hope for tolerance, much less for approbation.

Their scientific knowledge of anatomy, as applicable and subservient to medical purposes, was perhaps inferior to ours, for they appear not to have enjoyed the advantage in their princ.i.p.al cities of such men as the Hunters[h] and Cleghorn:[i] but that inferiority proved not injurious to the artist, who chiefly engaged in imitating the prominent features of the human frame when thrown into action, amply compensated for his ignorance of the theory of muscular motion, of the nervous system, and of osteology, by the effects of observation incessantly repeated on the most striking objects, and, it may be, the more impressive from coming unsought and uninculcated. In fact they could scarcely avoid making this observation: it was presst on them from every quarter; it was urged on them by every incident. If they attended their morning exercises, it was excited there; if they resorted to their evening amus.e.m.e.nts, it was roused there also. In the retirement of the country it was not allowed to sleep; in the bustle of the city it was awakened to all its vivacity.

From private enjoyment, from public security; from the recreations of peace, from the toils of war; from the vacuities of idleness, and from the labours of industry it alike received nurture, support, and aliment.

Thus reiteratedly enforced, its effects became, like those of a second nature, interwoven with the habitudes of the mind, and called forth into action, when the occasion required, with readiness and facility, without effort and without premeditation. Hence the wonders that we are told of the astonis.h.i.+ng power of their paintings, limited as we know they were in the number of their colours; of which though we are deprived of the sight by the lapse of time, yet are they rendered credible, nay, fully verified, to us by the matchless remains of their statues; whose transcendent merit we have ocular demonstration that neither prejudice had praised nor ignorance had extolled beyond their real deserts.

Hence the truth of nature in the Laoc.o.o.n, where the expression of suffering is not confined to the agitated visage, but is as forcibly marked in the agonized foot as in the distorted countenance. Hence every muscle moves, every sinew is stretched, every atom of the figure conspires to the general effect in the Borghese combatant:[k] and hence each particular part of the Farnesian Hercules represents, as forcibly as the entire statue, that character of superior manly strength and resistless might, which ancient tales have taught us to connect with the idea of the person of that fabled hero.

[Footnote h: Dr. William Hunter and Mr. John Hunter, the late celebrated anatomists of London.]

[Footnote i: Dr. George Cleghorn, the late excellent and deservedly famous Professor of Anatomy in the university of Dublin: a man of whom it can be truly said that the excellent qualities of his heart were as estimable as his superior professional talents were conspicuous.]

[Footnote k: This statue, which forms one of the most valuable possessions in the superb Borghese collection, is commonly called _the fighting Gladiator_; but, we apprehend, very erroneously: as the whole of that admirable figure bespeaks a character greatly superior to that of those degraded and despised beings, whose mercenary services contributed to the amus.e.m.e.nts of the Roman amphitheatre.]